I believe that the current copyright law isn't doing a great job at balancing the intellectual property rights of the owners and society's interest is recycling previously created material into new projects. I think that copyright law is actually hurting music in some cases. According to copyright law, a copyright lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Copyright covers the creator's rights to copy, distribute, perform, display, adapt and transmit digitally/broadcast their work. One must obtain a master use license and pay a royalty to an artist in order to sample from that artist. The way that I look at it, nothing is completely, truly original. We all gather inspiration from each other.
However, Gilbert O'Sullivan does believe that there is a fair balance in the copyright law. His song "Alone Again" was sampled by Biz Markie, who sampled a part of the piano and put it into a song he made his own. O'Sullivan ended up suing over Biz Markie's parody of the song.
Girl Talk and Public Enemy are just a couple of artists that rely on the remix culture that is music today. According to Midwest Music Business, The Beastie Boys paid about $125,000, just to the composers of the 105 different songs
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that they sampled from in 1989. Midwest Music Business also states that today it costs approximately $10,000-20,000 to be able to use a sample in one's own work. Very few people are able to afford to pay royalties for the samples of the music they need to make their own creative works. With such heavy costs weighing down the chances of gaining legal use of the song, it limits what artists are able to do that rely on mixing samples of different music.
I think that there should be a lowered price for royalties for music. If sampling were to be more affordable, I don't think artists would have to worry about illegal copies of their music circulating the internet. Today many people sample from others anyway and publish it on YouTube. A big part of this are artists that sample from older music. We've all heard music that reminds us of a particular period in our lives. Music can bring us closer to those memories. When a new artist wants their fans to feel 80s nostalgia, chances are that they will gain inspiration from or possibly sample music from that
time. Copyright law regarding sampling certainly is put in place for a reason. It is to protect the creativity and artistic expression of the original artist and/or band members. However, for artists that rely on sampling, like Girl Talk and Public Enemy, this can be a hefty price to pay. Their creativity involves mixing samples to create a new sound. Clyde Stubblefield, original "Funky Drummer" for James Brown, even said once that he didn't recognize his own beats in a lot of other music. It is changed so much and often distorted so that it is very difficult to pick out. At that point, it really comes down to the honor system and admitting the use of another artist's work.
middle of paper ... ... We listen today because although groups have tried to copy the Beastie Boys style, none has been able to mimic the mixing of rock and roll music and hip-hop lyrics as they did. Works Cited The "Beastie Boys Biography | Rolling Stone." Rolling Stone.
According to “The Changing Landscape of the Music Business,” Artists have to develop an image that appeals to the supporters in order to be unique. This can be achieved through the promotion of their music, but if the artist makes the wrong move, this can result in the artist struggling to sustain their career. There are many ways that licensing music can go wrong, with it either going into the wrong hands, or is abused with promotion so that the song isn’t enjoyed anymore, resulting in less sales or profit for the
Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The
Ferguson focuses on the importance of creativity and how much we can build off of each others ideas. Remixing is using tools already invented to build new products, it opens a door to an on going process of new inventions and ideas. Ferguson shows the importance and the huge effect remixing has on our music industry and even technology on today’s market. Remixing gives
The Internet has cut into the music industry's profits. It reduced the demand for CDs, increased the interest in singles and let people decide whether they want to pay for the new Prince album. This alone could be offset if all of the people pirating music would go to their favorite artists' shows. However, the hard economy has rapidly cut into people's ability to spend on luxury items and concerts rank right up there with sports in terms of practicality.
Over the past decade the societal view of creative society has greatly changed due to advances in computer technology and the Internet. In 1995, aware of the beginning of this change, two authors wrote articles in Wired Magazine expressing diametrically opposed views on how this technological change would take form, and how it would affect copyright law. In the article "The Emperor's Clothes Still Fit Just Fine" Lance Rose hypothesized that the criminal nature of copyright infringement would prevent it from developing into a socially acceptable practice. Thus, he wrote, we would not need to revise copyright law to prevent copyright infringement. In another article, Entitled "Intellectual Value", Esther Dyson presented a completely different view of the copyright issue. She based many her arguments on the belief that mainstream copyright infringement would proliferate in the following years, causing a radical revision of American ideas and laws towards intellectual property. What has happened since then? Who was right? This paper analyzes the situation then and now, with the knowledge that these trends are still in a state of transformation. As new software and hardware innovations make it easier to create, copy, alter, and disseminate original digital content, this discussion will be come even more critical.
As I sat in front of my computer downloading my favorite song from Napster, I started to think about how hard it must have been to write a song so sublime with the way the words flow from one another, and how talented one must be to do so. I started to think how hard people work on their music for themselves and their fans, and how their fans don’t realize what they are doing every time they download a song off the internet. What they don’t realize is that it is messing over the people who worked so hard pouring out their heart and soul into their music for everyone to enjoy. They are the people who are responsible for the music, not the people who work at Napster, or any of the other shafting music networks, who are embezzling from the people we all admire for the way they can flow out those heartwarming words. These words move us to the point that we want to cry, and sometimes do. These words we listen to when we want to go off into our own little world, and think about an extraordinary moment we once had that makes our sorrows disappear. These words remind us of a passed loved one who was once forgotten, and never to be again. They are the people who put their heart and soul into their music; these are people we use so selfishly and don’t even realize how much blood sweat and tears they shed just to put out quality words. They are the people we take for granted, and they are the people who sometimes take us, their fans, for granted as well, they are the artists themselves. File sharing is what it is thought as, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as theft, music theft; most commonly know as shafting. Every day people use shafting and think nothing of it. People sit in front of their computers and go to their favorite website and download file after file with out thinking how or where it comes from. They think it is just there for the taking and it is. Shafting is a trend that has just begun, but only time will tell how far it will go.
Music Copyright is a very important aspect of the music industry. The Copyright law was established to preserve the creativity and rights of authors, composers, performers of expression. Copyright is the law that protects the property rights of the creator of an original work in a fixed tangible medium. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/copyright) A fixed tangible medium is something substantial like copying lyrics on paper or putting a song on tape or CD. Copyright can be seen every where in the music industry. Many music artist of our culture today have been involved in copyright issues. Recently, on MTV news it was stated that, "As the music industry becomes increasingly concerned about protecting the integrity of artists copyrights in the age of MP3. Prince has now filed a motion in New York federal court aimed at shutting down several websites offering free downloads of the Artist's songs." (http://www.mtv.com…19990304/prince.jhtml) In addition, in recent music news, "Nine Inch Nails lead man Trent Reznor copyright infringement suit was dismissed. Another artist claimed that the Reznor had stolen material for his last album." (http://www.mtv.com…19991202/nine_inch_nails.jhtml) The copyright law has become an important legal aspect to know our music generation.
Is important for anyone who has created any intellectual property to protect it. In the music industry, in order for someone to protect their work, they must obtain a copyright. Music has been around before anyone could obtain a copyright and when the invention of the computer came along it made it easier for someone to steal another artist's intellectual property with the help of the internet. This paper will cover what events have taken a big role in copyright protection for artist, the consequences if someone was to break the rules of a copyright which is called copyright infringement, and how will a copyright hold in the future. Were copyrights enacted without the thought of life changing technology, and how can some music companies surpass copyright infringement and make a profit from the artist? Can a copyright really make that much of a difference in the world we know today?
The art of music can be described as a medium that can both physically and emotionally move people. All artists strive to be creative and stand out from the crowd; but when the majority of pop music is composed of four chords, where is the originality? G-E(minor)-C-D and A(minor)-C-D-F are the most common chord progressions and the only factors that change between the thousands of songs that use these progressions are the strumming pattern and the lyrics. However, the skills of the lyricist and composer who successfully produced these songs take a backseat to the singer. The audience robs them of their much due credit with their applause and idolizing. Although plenty of singers strive to be original, all artists “plagiarize” and reinvent the wheel; so, how are they able to achieve originality?
Introduction: In the past, music has been a costly business, where only people with a lot of money could enter and be successful in the industry. Changes in the music industry, coupled with new computer technology, have made it much easier for people without a lot of money to compose, produce, and distribute their creations. In order to get a better understanding of the music industry in comparison to 2014, one has to look at its history. There were many things that happened from the 1980’s onward, and they brought on a significant impact towards the music industry.
There has been controversy as to whether music should be free or not. As for the people who love to listen to music all the time, they would agree that the music should be free of charge. Benefits of free music are that you can listen to music fan free, helps out bands to be known, and reaches the crowds in less time and boots the popularity of the song; however, there are drawbacks, such as CD & MP3 gross sales decline, it’s an insult & harmful to artist and in all actuality, you are paying the record labels.
The recording industry needs to wake up and realize that technology is changing the way that people want to hear and buy music. Money can still be made and people will still go to the concerts and buy the CDs. The marketing will still go on at the concerts including t-shirts, key chains and posters. This shows that the purchase of CDs is not the only source of income for musicians or the industry. If the artists allow for their music to be available for free to the fans, many more would actually buy the other merchandise to support the artist. Music should not be a competition in the sense that the artist needs to make more money. Unfortunately, many of the artists today are in it for the money and new musicians see how it can be done. Real musicians should want their music to be heard first, not to figure out the quickest way to make a buck.
Production companies took a bold step forward by uploading their content online. People now are not obliged to buy a full album to listen to one song, for a minimal fee you can buy the track you want, the same goes for movies and electronic publications. The downloaded files though will be digitally protected so that only the person who downloads them can use them, and he can’t share them at home or with friends. Even with this step from production companies, a large portion of people who download music still do it for free. Moreover hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around.
However, in recent years, it is not uncommon to see copyright in the possession of a third party other than the creator. These companies make use of copyright as an investment and financial tools to gain profit. In this case, the use of copyright loses its original purpose of protecting the creator, but used as a mean for financial gain. This could possibly hinder creativity as innovation becomes a financial tool catered to the tastes of the general public, while the less marketable new ideas goes unnoticed by the general public under the copyright laws. It is crucial to note that online platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Youtube, and people making their music/works available online for free shows the rapid surge in the number of people willing to sacrifice their copyrights to market themselves to the world. In this highly saturated market, copyright laws can become less relevant as marketing and business is placed on higher