The Blurred Lines verdict was wrong in my opinion, but… Blurred Lines needn’t be quite as unsettling as it’s being made out to be! Yes, I’m having conversations where attorneys are putting it in perspective: “We are operating in a ‘post-Blurred Lines world’ now, so my client and I have to consider…”  And I get …

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and their hit ‘Thrift Shop” have nothing to fear from “legendary jazz musician” Paul Batiste’s latest lawsuit. New Orleans jazzer Paul Batiste is evidently suing Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, claiming he hears his own work in their hit song “Thrift Shop.” So of course, I was anxious to see if there …

“Hey, that’s my song! They stole my music.” It’s a terrible feeling to believe that your music has been stolen. I often hear stories like, “I was listening to the radio, and I had to pull off the road!” Okay, maybe we don’t listen to a lot of radio anymore; instead, it’s Spotify, or you’re …

Could this be the biggest music copyright infringement payout of all time? I’ll put on the musicologists hat in a second and break it down but really the musicology over infringement or non-infringement is fairly simple, and unless there’s a rabbit up someone’s sleeve, we could pretty much head straight to the more interesting musicology …

There’s a lot riding on the verdict of this soundalike infringement case that could go either way. The Eminem “Lose Yourself” case is a bit funny, but it’s by no means trivial. I think it’s very possible that this soundalike is going to be found to infringe upon Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” and that makes it …

Fight fire with fire, I suppose. We wrote a post about this action a few months ago, when we first heard that Messy Mya’s estate was suing Beyoncé for twenty million dollars over a little blurb she may or may not have used without permission to kick off her track “Formation.”This video, which has 3 …

Back in July 2016, Musicologize published a pretty deep take down of the “Amazing” versus “Photograph” case, Amazing v. Photograph | Why Sheeran’s Photograph Infringes. and came to the conclusion that Ed Sheeran would be well advised to settle it. And it appears today that he has. Congratulations to “Amazing’s” songwriters, plaintiffs Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard …

Tons of casual observers with youtube channels are getting stroked today as Kandi Burruss & Tiny Harris who wrote TLC’s Billboard topping hit “No Scrubs” are getting a song writing credit on Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.” But don’t read too much into it. Sure, there has been tons of internet chatter about how Sheeran …

It was never about plagiarism, but it was about copyright infringement. And this case might’ve been interesting, but alas it never got there. And now it appears to be settled. It was never interesting because it never ventured into the exploration of the concepts of “derivative work” versus other sorts of transformative works. And as a …

Explicit language and parental advisories on this one. Beyonce is being sued in federal court in New Orleans because the estate of late YouTube notable Messy Mya claims her track “Formation” from the “Lemonade” album use the New Orleans bounce rapper’s voice without their consent. And indeed, in”Formation” the voice of Messy Mya, whose legal name …