Yours mine or ours?

When is your music your music? It  seems that everyone is suing everyone over copywriter infringement from shared melodies to a basic beat line. Can you even compose anything without worrying if you are using someone eases material from the millions of songs out there? How would you even know it happened? Musicians are not being silent anymore they are lawyering up and fighting even the biggest of names in the music industry wanting their piece of the revenue pie. Most recently Lady Gaga's Oscar winning song Shallow has her being sued and accused of stealing the melody from an unknown artist. Steve Ronsen who had his own 2012 song called Almost.

The big dispute is basically a three note part that goes up the scale but plays a big part in both songs.  His song says I can feel and her song says I'm falling. He wants a multi-million dollar settlement. Did you ever know that three notes up a scale could be so valuable? But it is!

Katy Perry had to pay up millions for here liable copyright infringement for her 2013 hit song Dark Horse. She paid $2.7 million dollars . Robin Thick paid $5 million to Marvin Gay's estate for his theft of a beat in his 2015 hit called Blurred Lines. 

Quite often you don't even get to own your own music if you have a deal with managers or promoters. Taylor Swifts entire catalog of music was sold.  Scooter Braun is a promoter who also has Justin Bieber as a client, Ariana Grande and once Kanye too.  This Scooter guy bought Taylor's former label Big Machine that includes so many of her recording for $300 million dollars. Is this a form of slavery working for someone else and not for you? Shouldn't artists own the rights to their own music? Paul of the Beatles and Prince went through similar battles to own their iconic music. 

What can the unknown composer do when even the big stars are ripping people off and getting ripped themselves too? Taylor was signed to Big Machine in 2004 when she was just 14 years old by Scott Borchetta. Thanks to Taylor Big Machine made millions. Taylor wrote hugh teenage hits as a freshman in high school like Teardrops from my Guitar, Our Song, and Love Story helped make her work worth $300 million dollars. And she doesn't own it ? UGH! She even went on to release five more albums with Big Machine. 

Only last November did she sign with Republic Records and Universal Music Group and now her new music will be owned by her and she will possess her master recordings from now on. The absolute worst is that she wasn't even given an opportunity to buy back her own music. WTF? Apparently buying, sueing and selling musicall assets is bigger even than the music itself. Now artists are angry with each other that once was a unified business. 

In a record deal it is standard for the record company to own the master recordings. The company is the one putting up the money for that music to be recorded and promoted. When you are just starting out in the mainstream it is an exception for a poor starving typical artist to be able to have all the funds required to promote and distribute their stuff. 

Artists like Rihanna bought back her masters from the record labels. Prince finally owned his music but has about 25 labels he tossed his work to. At least Taylor's new song About Me will be totally owned by her. Hopefully someone won't crawl out from under their rock and sue her claiming it is their song. Sigh!