Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture
Published on 17. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-0-19-094593-0 (ISBN)
Description
Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture offers a thorough introduction to copyright issues that are central to today's musicians. The book has an innovative design: half of the material is presented in the form of a graphic novel, which is coupled with accessible, insightful prose and relevant case histories. Through a series of chapters that take students step by step through the fundamentals of copyright and creativity, Jennifer Jenkins clarifies basic concepts, lays out an engaging history, points out cultural effects of legal rules, and tells scores of stories of great musical controversies, past and present. The book is paired with a series of Spotify and YouTube playlists, so that students can listen to the material under review. The end result is neither dry nor obscure. And this is as it should be, because the legal rules surrounding our musical culture are both important and captivating.
Every year, thousands of students majoring in subjects such as Music, Communications, Business, Film Studies, and Entertainment Law deal with issues raised by copyright. The current textbook market serves them inadequately. There are dry, legal tomes that deluge students with legal technicalities but offer little context, illustration, or connection to our cultural history. There are breezy manuals written by non-lawyers that conflate markedly different subjects (such as copyright infringement and plagiarism, or "fair use" and unoriginality). But few offer sound legal and cultural history in a format that students will be able to use and understand. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture fills that gap with its marriage of text and graphic presentation.
The basic question music copyright law tries to answer is a simple one: when is borrowing, or simple musical similarity, okay, and when is it illegal? But the answers to that simple question can befuddle both students and professors. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture lays out four short examples of the book's approach, each dealing with a question that students frequently raise. The questions are:
1. Is copyright infringement the same as plagiarism? Is it okay to copy something, so long as I give credit to the original?
2. How do I know whether one song violates the copyright of another song? What are the stages of the analysis?
3. What parts of a song are subject to exclusive ownership under copyright law and why? What aspects of music does copyright leave free for anyone to build on?
4. Can someone copy something unconsciously? What if a fragment of a tune gets stuck in your head and years later you write a song that mines that subconscious memory? Is that copyright infringement or just the normal process of creativity?
Answering these questions is key to understanding the implications of copyright law and its impact on the creative arts. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture provides these answers in a format that will appeal to today's students in music business, entertainment law, and related courses.
Every year, thousands of students majoring in subjects such as Music, Communications, Business, Film Studies, and Entertainment Law deal with issues raised by copyright. The current textbook market serves them inadequately. There are dry, legal tomes that deluge students with legal technicalities but offer little context, illustration, or connection to our cultural history. There are breezy manuals written by non-lawyers that conflate markedly different subjects (such as copyright infringement and plagiarism, or "fair use" and unoriginality). But few offer sound legal and cultural history in a format that students will be able to use and understand. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture fills that gap with its marriage of text and graphic presentation.
The basic question music copyright law tries to answer is a simple one: when is borrowing, or simple musical similarity, okay, and when is it illegal? But the answers to that simple question can befuddle both students and professors. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture lays out four short examples of the book's approach, each dealing with a question that students frequently raise. The questions are:
1. Is copyright infringement the same as plagiarism? Is it okay to copy something, so long as I give credit to the original?
2. How do I know whether one song violates the copyright of another song? What are the stages of the analysis?
3. What parts of a song are subject to exclusive ownership under copyright law and why? What aspects of music does copyright leave free for anyone to build on?
4. Can someone copy something unconsciously? What if a fragment of a tune gets stuck in your head and years later you write a song that mines that subconscious memory? Is that copyright infringement or just the normal process of creativity?
Answering these questions is key to understanding the implications of copyright law and its impact on the creative arts. Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture provides these answers in a format that will appeal to today's students in music business, entertainment law, and related courses.
Reviews / Votes
The highlight of this book is that it provides clear historical context and an accurate depiction of the current music industry, with a consistent thread and acknowledgement of the creative, which no book that I've seen has addressed in this way. For this reason I think it will both appeal to, and be very appropriate, for music and music business students.- Lee Dannay, New York University This is a contemporary copyright text which does a great job of setting up important information on how copyright applies to musicians in a novel way - via a text and graphic novel.
- Jeremy Peters, Wayne State University This is a textbook that students would actually open and read! It breaks down complex legal issues of copyright and intellectual property in a way that students will grasp and have fun while doing so.
- Chris Vrenna, Calhoun Community College
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 203 mm
Weight
1179 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-094593-0 (9780190945930)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jennifer Jenkins is a Clinical Professor of Law teaching Music Copyright and Intellectual Property at Duke Law School and Director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, where she heads its Arts Project DS a project analyzing the effects of intellectual property on cultural production. She is the co-author (with James Boyle) of the open coursebook Intellectual Property: Cases and Materials (6th ed, 2024) and the graphic novel Theft! A History of
Music, a 2000-year history of musical borrowing and regulation, and the author of numerous academic articles on intellectual property issues. She has been widely quoted on copyright matters in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Her radio and TV appearances include segments on CBS News, Planet Money, CNN, the BBC, and NPR> 's Weekend Edition, Morning Edition, and Marketplace. While in practice, she was a member of the team that defended the copyright infringement suit against the publisher of the novel The Wind Done Gone (a parodic rejoinder to Gone with the Wind) in SunTrust v. Houghton Mifflin. Jenkins received her B.A. in English from Rice University, her J.D. from Duke Law School, and her M.A. in English from Duke University.
Music, a 2000-year history of musical borrowing and regulation, and the author of numerous academic articles on intellectual property issues. She has been widely quoted on copyright matters in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Her radio and TV appearances include segments on CBS News, Planet Money, CNN, the BBC, and NPR> 's Weekend Edition, Morning Edition, and Marketplace. While in practice, she was a member of the team that defended the copyright infringement suit against the publisher of the novel The Wind Done Gone (a parodic rejoinder to Gone with the Wind) in SunTrust v. Houghton Mifflin. Jenkins received her B.A. in English from Rice University, her J.D. from Duke Law School, and her M.A. in English from Duke University.
Content
Introduction
Chapter 1 - How Did We Get Here? Chapter 2 - Introduction to Copyright Chapter 3 - A Tale of Two Technologies Chapter 4 - Owning Music Chapter 5 - Musical Echoes Chapter 6 - Subconscious Copying Chapter 7 - Blurring the Lines Chapter 8- Moving the Needle Chapter 9 - Sampling and Hip Hop Chapter 10 - Sample Clearance and Sampling 2.0 Chapter 11 - Creative Destruction Chapter 12 - The Music Streaming Era Chapter 13 - Music, Copyright, and Racial Justice Conclusion
Chapter 1 - How Did We Get Here? Chapter 2 - Introduction to Copyright Chapter 3 - A Tale of Two Technologies Chapter 4 - Owning Music Chapter 5 - Musical Echoes Chapter 6 - Subconscious Copying Chapter 7 - Blurring the Lines Chapter 8- Moving the Needle Chapter 9 - Sampling and Hip Hop Chapter 10 - Sample Clearance and Sampling 2.0 Chapter 11 - Creative Destruction Chapter 12 - The Music Streaming Era Chapter 13 - Music, Copyright, and Racial Justice Conclusion