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Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
- Justsignedup 9y agoThis also underlines the rediculousness of how long copyright is. Seriously, around what ~130 years? Things inspire people, people copy, there isn't an infinite amount of good ideas. Frankly creep is old enough that I'd argue it should be copyable. Just like other ideas. But alas the Mickey Mouse laws are really hindering progress IMO.
- eat_veggies 9y agoThis really reminds me of a short story someone on HN recommended a while ago: "Melancholy Elephants," written by Spider Robinson. http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cJ0th 9y agoAs a hobby music producer I just can't wrap my head around the logic behind copyright infringement. It's so arbitrary. It's illegal to steal a melody but sophisticated chord progressions are fine. It's illegal to copy the text of even the simplest verse but reverse engineering some complex synthesizer sounds is fine. Although I personally strive for it, I don't think originality is a point worth discussing. Music is about expression first and foremost. The difficulty we have today is that you can't freely express yourself. Many of the great hip hop records of the 90s, for instance, couldn't be produced today because sample clearing would be a nightmare. I do, of course, understand that each work requires, errm, work. So I am fine with some form of protection for the artist. But imho it should be a rather broad protection. That is, releasing a cover without permission or selling someone else work (i.e. 100% of the lyrics or melody or even arrangement...) as your own is not ok. But I think as long as there is any form of creative alteration involved then "copying" should be fair play. Especially when several years or even a decade have past.
- ebbv 9y agoThat sounds reasonable but how do you define “any form of creativity/expression” legally? That’s the problem. If you know anything about writing music you should know why chord progressions can’t be copyrighted. There’s only 12 notes, there’s not that many unique chord progressions to be found in the Standard I/IV/V pop music format. Melodies and lyrics, on the other hand, there’s a nearly infinite supply. The problem with limiting protection to only a few years is that would ensure an even more brutal cycle of song “remakes” for all pop music which would be even more stale than what we have now.
- tarsinge 9y ago> Melodies and lyrics, on the other hand, there’s a nearly infinite supply Not quite true for pop melodies especially on basic progressions when you apply all the contraints (harmony related to the current chord, tension/release). Lyrics on the other hand...
- ebbv 9y agoPeople are pretty flexible in what they’ll accept in a melody. You can play a lot with outside notes and weird rhythms if you have a good performance and as long as you bring it back to diatonic notes.
- kijin 9y agoThe market can decide whether or not it wants all those stale remakes, whether with or without legal protection.
- hashkb 9y agoThat's the problem. The market likes repetitive crap. Artists need to be forced by the courts to be creative. Apparently.
- cJ0th 9y agoI'd say “any form of creativity/expression” means you take something and don't copy it 1:1. Copying 100% of a (lyric|composition|: not okay, taking a subset of it: fine. Admittedly, it has to be a bit more sophisticated than that. For instance, getting away with just omitting the very last word would be ridiculous. > If you know anything about writing music you should know why chord progressions can’t be copyrighted. There’s only 12 notes, there’s not that many unique chord progressions to be found in the Standard I/IV/V pop music format. yes and no. A chord can be played in many ways. For instance, when you play C major you could play the root an octave below the third and the fifth or one octave up. This alone is no worth copyright. But when the way every single chord of a progression is played is copied it gets questionable, imo. Even more so when you look at "jazzy" chords where you can sprinkle some "non necessary" notes in here and there for color. > The problem with limiting protection to only a few years is that would ensure an even more brutal cycle of song “remakes” for all pop music which would be even more stale than what we have now. You could be right, but personally I am not convinced.
- tr0ut 9y agoI think this is just the nature of music. It requires a rather rigid system which does not offer enough diversity to be completely unique. All musical genres need to at least share the same root elements for association. https://youtu.be/Co9mW_9hH2g https://youtu.be/Co9mW_9hH2g
- mping 9y agoThis is not true. It may be true for modern pop, but I can give lots of examples where originality abounds: Classical music, Jazz and its derivatives, prog rock. I never understood why people listen to radio music and don't even know what is out there, it's like seeing the same dull basic painting over and over again.
- jdietrich 9y agoAlmost uniquely in art, free jazz retains the power to shock even sophisticated audiences. There is a brutality to the work of artists like Albert Ayler or Milford Graves that transcends the intellectual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwkHCLI1j1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwkHCLI1j1w
- tr0ut 9y agoNo it is true. I said all music genres share a common ground. We can take all genres of music and boil them down to a structure. What makes Jazz different than Heavy Metal? Or better, what makes Bebop different than Big Band or Fusion? They all share the "Jazz" element that we recognize as being uniquely Jazz. Its the Rhythms, notes, chord progression, modals, timbre and harmonies. You get the idea.
- ebbv 9y agoThis is not true. There is nothing rigid about music. You can do whatever you want. Unless you care about being popular. Then what you run up against is what people enjoy.
- bitwize 9y agoYou can do whatever you want, but the estate of John Cage owns the copyright on not making music, so if you plan to not make music at all, lawyer up.
- jimnotgym 9y agoFor anyone who doesn't play the guitar, 'Creep' and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhere find in their second month of guitar mastery. It shouldn't even be copyrightable. The guitar is full of things like this that are not great feats of musical theory but simple physical movements that are bound to happen. This is why guitar music generally sounds so derivative, because there are a number of obvious steps that all players will find quite quickly. Why should you get paid for the guitar equivalent of pressing all of the white notes on a piano? Edit: typo
- ebbv 9y agoChord progressions aren’t copyright-able. So no, that obvious thing isn’t. What is subject to copyright is the melody. That’s what they got the claim on. The vocal melody.
- golemotron 9y agoAnd it's the same melody. It really is. Open and shut case.
- jimnotgym 9y agoAn open and shut case for the Hollies. How do Radiohead feature? If I copy a song, then lose an infringement suit to the original composer, can I really claim a subsequent infringement?
- ebbv 9y agoRadiohead only gave up a tiny percentage of their rights on "Creep", so yeah they can still make claims on it.
- jimnotgym 9y ago
- minipci1321 9y agoCan't help but think of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccompanied_Sonata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccompanied_Sonata
- jasode 9y agoThe issue with Lana Del Ray's "Get Free", Radiohead's "Creep", and Hollies "Air That I Breathe" is that we (and/or the courts) don't put the chord progression of "I–III–IV–iv" in the same everybody-and-their-dog-has-been-doing-it bucket as "I-IV-V" or the "I–V–vi–IV"[1] (axis of Awesome parodied in the youtube video[2]). If musicologists for Lana Del Ray can find an out-of-copyright work such as a very old classical piece or folk song that uses that progression, the potential lawsuit would have no merit. Until then, that chord progression's very identifiable "chromatic movement and eerie tension" is easy to notice so it will always attract new lawsuits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%9... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
- Joeboy 9y agoI see your point (two unusual things being similar looks more suspicious than two common things being similar) but I think two "I–V–vi–IV" songs that were as melodically similar as Creep and Get Free would still be pretty suspicious. Edit: Btw I'm not sure I-III-IV-iv is that uncommon. It's in eg. David Bowie's Space Oddity and Pink Floyd's Nobody Home. It sounds to me like an old jazz / ragtime type progression although I'm struggling to come up with examples.
- elnygren 9y agohttps://open.spotify.com/track/61MoKejsY2k0hVb50zZ4Yn https://open.spotify.com/track/61MoKejsY2k0hVb50zZ4Yn To be honest, probably anyone can tell that the intro and first verse is a quite clear case of plagiarism. First 10-20 seconds is enough. It's the same melody, same chords and even a similar way of playing those chords with a guitar.
- billsix 9y agoI have "written" guitar riffs that I later found out were from a song I hadn't heard in 5+ years. I had honestly thought that I wrote it.
- QAPereo 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia As you see, that’s just part of being human!
- myko 9y agoHa, my most recent example of this is "Jane Says". In retrospect I'm not sure how I played it for a week without realizing what song I was playing.
- jimnotgym 9y agoMore than that, I have written guitar riffs and melodies and latter found that they are the same as a song I have never heard before! I am sure this due to the very constrained nature of what is practical to reach with your fingers, the nature of the interval between strings, the tricks that hammer-ons allow you to do between certain notes and not others, the way it is easier to apply vibrato and bends to notes around half way up the neck and on the thinner 3 strings. Millions of possibilities for the competent jazz guitarist, but few of them are practical for normal people.
- privacypoller 9y agofrom a copyright perspective intent doesn't factor into it - check out the judgement against George Harrison for “subconscious plagiarism” in the "My Sweet Lord" copyright case.
- yohann305 9y agoNowadays it wouldn't be hard to build a program that generates a 500+ hour long instrumental piece which contains 80%+ of all song progression sequences. Then release it under "free for commercial use" and nobody can every sue anyone else in the future. Thank you very much
- jasonkostempski 9y agoWon't it get you sued out of existence by every existing label/artist?
- yohann305 9y agoi didn't think of it, we need the "satoshi nakamoto" of music
- ozten 9y agoDuring a trial, would the track have to have some notoriety, to be considered well know enough to have stolen from?
- the_gipsy 9y agoIt id absurd to copyright a melody IMO. Consider flamenco. It has about 10 base styles each with a specific scale, melody (yes you are reading right!), beat, and structure. Then there are a variety of variations, that perhaps change the structure or mix in another melody. Between the base melody parts, there are falsetas which are unique melodies. These are also shared between guitarists. Some are considered popular and are untraceable, if their first appearance is near the time of the invention of recording devices. The lyrics are also shared between singers. In fact it is quite rare for a singer to compose any new lyrics of his own! Furthermore flamenco does not really have “songs” like pop music has. There is simply performance, where singers, guitarists, dancers and palmeros play. Never a specific song, but just one style so that the structnure is agreed and known. No one owns a verse, a melody or a dance move. Flamenco is a music world totally incompatible with the western notion of copyright, because it falls apart. Really the o ly thing that can be agreed on is that one particular recording of a performance can have copyright.
- ozim 9y agoI can imagine that some street flamenco artists were fighting over that others were copycats. Probably you won't know about this because it is not international drama and money involved are quite small.
- the_gipsy 9y agoBut that is never about specific verses, melody nor chord progression, because those are ALWAYS shared. So there no objective way to tell the difference between a variation and an attempt to copycat.
- fnl 9y agoI don't see why this isn't just another example of a broken system - copyright is wrong, always. It was invented by the Inquisition, after all.
- achr2 9y agoIf any one or two of the song characteristics were similar most would chalk it up to inspiration - but in this case every progression, melody, vocal slide, beat, and crescendo is appropriated. Not to mention the tone of the piece and lyrics.
- bfsg 9y agoThere is no such thing as creating an original. Everyone and everything is inspired in some or many ways. You consciously or unconsciously select your source(s) of inspiration. The guitarist of Radiohead is not playing some never played before stuff, it's the basic guitar thing millions of guitarists play. Everybody is copying everybody, changing only slight bits. The whole music industry is stolen. And the worse part of this issue is that Radiohead is not making a dollar less because of Lana Del Rey, instead they just want to make some more of of her. For some reason most people in this world want to own too many things they never should own in the first place. Intellectual property should only come into play if it really harms the 'original' authors revenue because of a straight copy.
- Applejinx 9y agoThere's another twist. I'm a guitar player: I can play a guitar note literally fifty different ways (on a single guitar/amp combination, no effects), if 'different' means 'every one can be ABX tested against every other one using a typical normal person as listener'. Anybody who's ever been into blues in any form knows it's how you play it. Folks who have been into blues have been some of the most successful musicians ever (see: Fleetwood Mac, pre Buckingham Nicks) If you say 'love' or 'hate' in sincerity, does it matter that you've not come up with an innovative way to spell it? It's part of an expression of your intention. Copyright seems a way to try and protect these intangible things by tying them to a more abstracted 'key', and there's the problem. I've recently listened to the Pixies' 'Brick Is Red', off Surfer Rosa. If you defined their vocal melodies in terms of Hz rather than quantizing them to nearest chromatic note and sixteenth-note timing, you'd find the vocalizations were really REALLY distinct (and next to impossible to reproduce!) Hanson are on record as saying that their hit 'Mmmbop' is never covered properly. They're absolutely right. The chorus words go into a really fast triplet feel that's not a straight subdivision of the beat, a triplet feel that's not doubled by other instruments, and to screw up that timing means you're screwing up something very fundamental to the hit quality of the song. One of the basic problems here is boiling stuff down to abstractions that serve as 'keys'. 'Mmmbop' in sixteenth notes is not 'Mmmbop'. 'Brick Is Red' in MIDI is not 'Brick Is Red'.
- odabaxok 9y agoEverything is a remix video series is worth watching in this topic. It covers how every musician from Led Zeppelin to recent artists "remix" existing melodies. Also, how remix is done in other genres (e.g. movies): http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
- combatentropy 9y agoPeople have accused me of being creative. But I always told myself I just mixed from more sources. For example, your average high-schooler might try to re-do a particular scene from a movie. Meanwhile, I would copy the camerawork from one movie, the comedic tone from another, and the special effect from another. People would tell me, you're so creative, even when the title of the home video clearly reflected its influences (something like "The Umpire Strikes Back"). What I love about the open-source movement is its embrace of letting others take what they want from your work, be it the entire program, just a function, or just a principle (not actually copying a single line verbatim). Maybe this is because you learned early on that it was never "your" work in the first place, but that you too had learned and copied from others. It seems to be that society doesn't understand the creation of art. To most people the artist is a wizard behind closed doors, creating works of genius from nothing. This is why our copyright laws are too strong and too strict. In truth, I think not just some but all artists work how I do: taking something they like, bending it with something else that they like, and adding a pinch of something else they thought was cool. Further differentiation happens in the execution. For example, if you're making a movie, a character you wrote may have been more obviously a rip-off in the script, but now that you have this new actor playing it, it naturally diverges further. Or you try to do a camera move you saw in movie, but your own skill keeps you from executing it perfectly, and it takes on its own character. Differences in the location and lighting further obscure the shot's influence.
- jsgo 9y agoI get that everyone is talking chord progressions, but honestly, to me in Del Rey vs Radiohead: it is the vocals of the opening part of Get Free. Because that's the part where I'm thinking "hey, this sounds like Creep" (not a musician). The Hollies and Radiohead, though, yeah, that's very similar accompanying music.
- privacypoller 9y agoThe interesting part of this is not actually the copyright infringement, but the aggressive use by the Del Rey camp as a marketing opportunity. Her song is a deep cut that was never a single and apparently Radiohead is trying to settle out of court, yet she's actively pushing the narrative of a "100% claim lawsuit" and how they're making her life a "living hell". Coupled with the deliberate manufactured image of Lana Del Rey and the resulting exposure I can't believe this in not an intentional ploy that's driving huge exposure to both her and this substandard, at best derivative, song.
- mmanfrin 9y agoWhat? Radiohead is demanding full royalties for the song, for a melody they did not create. Why on earth should they just settle out of court?
- mason182 9y agoa junky like lana del ray can never make original music, too lazy
- IAmGraydon 9y agoI read this article and have to admit that I instantly sided with Radiohead because I have a natural bias toward them and against Lana. I'm just not a fan of her music. Then I listened to her track. I'm very familiar with the Radiohead track. Radiohead is just plain wrong on this one. Here's the problem - your average jury/judge/lawyer does not have the required music theory knowledge to understand how asinine Radiohead's case is. There is a short list of 3-, 4- and 5-chord harmonic progressions that literally 90% of popular music is based on. What makes these songs different is the overlying melody and (to a lesser degree) the rhythm. Because these progressions are so commonly used, your mind doesn't automatically go "this song sounds like that song" because they all somewhat sound like each other (in a harmonic sense) and none really sticks out. We focus instead on the melody and rhythm. Now in the case of this Lana Del Rey song, she is using a far more rare chord progression in the verse where the last chord in the progression moves from a major chord to the minor of the same chord instead of resolving to the tonic. It creates the sense of dark tension in the song. Radiohead also uses this technique in Creep. Lana has really done nothing different from all the other pop musicians who use the same harmonic progressions as each other, but in this case there are very few songs to compare it to since it's a very non-standard progression. So when you hear this next to Creep, your brain goes "wow they do sound very similar". The melody of the vocals in the verse seems to carry some similarity to Creep as well, but it's really a pretty natural melodic line to sing over that progression due to how strong the color of the harmonic sequence is. Most importantly, the chorus shares nothing in common with the chorus of Creep. In court, Radiohead will likely win because the general population just does not understand this in-depth. They haven't written music and therefore don't get how easily one song can sound like another with absolutely no plagiarism intended. The sad thing, to me, is that Radiohead DOES understand this and they are still choosing to go ahead with the lawsuit against another creative artist. I guess that's what happens when you still need to make money and your career effectively ended decades ago.
- rsfern 9y agoThe rest of your post aside, Radiohead are still touring internationally and writing great music... their latest album was released less than two years ago
- klakier 9y agoIt's not hard to make original music. It's easy! But it's way harder to find listeners of original music. People like what they already know...
- milesward 9y agoI have struggled to master guitar-based songs on my handy electric Sousaphone for years. I grab a small bass guitar and POOF: pop songs are mechanically easy on this device, it's right there under your fingers. Turns out: the instrument informs and constrains the creation.
- foobaw 9y agoI'll add on that this is an absurd lawsuit, in a music theory perspective. However, my legal knowledge is shabby. Are there any precedents regarding cases like these? If, for some peculiar reason, Radiohead wins this case, then I can imagine they'll have the ability to just sue anyone that becomes popular that uses a similar chord progression / melody. Considering that "original music" is almost non-existent in pop music, what's going to happen then?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- emveeoh 9y agoHey Radiohead... Once you win this lawsuit, give Lana 1% of the publishing back for bothering to write new lyrics to your awesome melody...
- blawson 9y agoWell timed piece from the BBC related to this: Has Pop Music Lots Its Fun? https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/fb84bf19-29c9-4ed3-b6b6-953e8a083334 https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/fb84bf19-29c9-4ed3-b6b6...
- piokuc 9y agoI don't normally listen to Lana but I clicked on the YouTube link and saw the title of the album is Lust for Life - is Iggy Pop planning to sue her too, lol.
- acobster 9y ago> Sebastian Tomczak, an electronic musician from Australia, uploaded a ten-hour white-noise video to YouTube, and was promptly walloped with five infringement claims. YouTube’s automated Content ID system scans all uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted material; any overlapping content is flagged. When a supposed infringement is detected, the copyright owner can either have the video removed, or allow it to remain, and automatically garnish any advertising revenue that it might generate. This kind of IP shenanigans is going to continue for as long as the burden of proof is on the party doing the "infringing." YouTube and platforms like it are built with this inherent bias toward copyright holders, despite the absurd frequency of false positives. On one hand, I can see how this might protect, say, indie film studios who don't have the resources to chase after everyone who posts their movies on YouTube illegally. At the same time, when a system's incentives result in bullshit like Fair Use protections being completely ignored[0], it's time for a new system. Mammoth, centralized systems like YouTube are, unfortunately, still Really Hard to maintain without the backing of a proportionately mammoth company with lots of resources. You can be sure that that company's interest will often align with those of others with deep pockets. So in my mind, as with many of the big problems on today's internet, the technical aspect of this challenge really stems from centralization itself. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryFmUjtwEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryFmUjtwEY