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IASPM conference Cork 2014
IASPM 2014 conference poster I’m en route to the UK & Ireland IASPM conference in Cork. I was at the International one in Spain last year – the branch and International IASPM conferences leapfrog...
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IASPM 2014: The Needle and the Damage Done: Some Thoughts about Needletime
Martin Cloonan, University of Glasgow ABSTRACT: [with apologies to Martin for missing the start of his session] From the late 1920s until the late 1980s the amount of records the BBC could play on its...
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I feel fine. Friends – watch your step…
Tagged: beatles, bobby parker, copyright, friends, guitar, plagiarism, rembrandts, riff
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Joint Authorship … law and practice in popular music recording #arposlo2014
Joint Authorship, Works-for-Hire, and the Idea/Expression Distinction: The collision of law and practice in popular music recording Tom Porcello – Vassar College USA ABSTRACT: This paper examines some...
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Sam Smith and Tom Petty – coincidental similarity or accidental copying?
Tom Petty, one-fifth of the co-writing team behind Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’. This is a blog post about 5 bars of music. As reported in Rolling Stone and The Sun recently, the melodic similarity...
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Soul music – similarity research
I’m currently researching similarity in soul music, and would like to get responses from readers of this blog. Contributions are anonymous and by voting you’ll be helping songwriters to protect their...
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A day in the life of music listening
Boston: view of the Charles River and city skyline I was recently invited to write a blog piece for ‘Harkive‘, a music/sociology data collection project run by Craig Hamilton at City University...
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Did Sam Smith copy ‘Earth Song’ in ‘Writing’s On The Wall’?
I was interviewed this week by the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper about the alleged similarities between Sam Smith’s new James Bond movie theme song ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ and Michael Jackson’s Earth...
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Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
So the Stairway to Heaven / Taurus controversy was back in the news yesterday, due to the fact that the dispute is to go to a jury in the US in May this year. I participated in a panel discussion about...
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What exactly did ‘Stairway to Heaven’ copy from ‘Taurus’?
And my Spirit is crying… As mentioned in a previous post, the question of whether Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven (1971) copies a part of Spirit’s Taurus (1968) may soon be settled. Representatives...
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Berklee’s Fair Music report
My first full session today at the CMS conference is presented by Berklee faculty members Peter Alhadeff and Luiz Augusto Buff. They are, today, analysing and critiquing Berklee’s Fair Music Report....
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[ABSTRACT] Appropriation and Copyrightability in Music Copyright
I Hate These Blurred Lines: Wrongful Appropriation and Copyrightability in Music Copyright Academic/copyright post: here’s an abstract (pdf) of a paper that I’ll be presenting with Prof Wendy Gordon...
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Wayfair, you’ve got just the soundalikes I need
Friends, musicians and soundmen (and women) – lend me your ears. Here are some Wayfair TV commercials in a playlist – let me know (Twitter @joebennettmusic) what songs you think they’re using as a...
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Close to the Edge: investigating songwriting’s ‘plagiarism threshold’
Joe Bennett, Boston Conservatory at Berklee [Presented at IASPM 2017, 26 June 2017] Stephen Schwartz’s score for ‘Wicked’ quotes 7 pitches from ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’… but does it infringe a...
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Just for fun? Contemporary Gifting of Music #iaspm2017
Chris Anderton – Southampton Solent University (UK) Just for the fun of it? Contemporary Strategies for Making, Distributing and Gifting Music Ben Sharp aka Cloudkicker is a prolific independent artist...
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Constructing Narrative in the Contemporary Music Industries
Kenny Barr (University of Glasgow, UK) Paying the Piper: Constructing Narrative in the Contemporary Music Industries ABSTRACT: In the 21st century the digitalisation of every facet of the production,...
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Did Lana Del Rey copy Radiohead?
This week, Lana Del Rey stated that she is being sued for copying Radiohead’s 1992 song Creep in her 2017 release, Get Free. It’s true about the lawsuit. Although I know my song wasn’t inspired by...
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The DIY Musician #Berklee #cdbaby
This week I’m at Berklee’s campus in Valencia, Spain. There will be some regular work-related meetings while I’m out here, talking about our study abroad options, and the four Masters programs. And...
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How To Negotiate a Contract #berklee #cdbaby #diymusician
Today I attended two presentations at the DIY Musician Conference. The first one, which I’ll get to in a later post (because it’s kinda techy and will take time to write up) was an open DJ session with...
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New Music Ecosystem 2018 conference – live blog
No, the other Washington. Mopop Seattle. This exhibit is a very large guitar stand, which is arguably not stable enough for touring. I’m in Seattle at the New Music Ecosystem conference, organised by...
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