Rip-offs and lawsuits, the downfall of the music industry?

2019 seems to be the year of copyright infringement lawsuits in the music industry. Even though wars between musicians have been going on since the first copyright laws were created in 1978, this year appears to be the pinnacle of it all. Should artists be scared to bring out new music?

In 1971 Led Zeppelin came out with a song called ‘Stairway to Heaven', unbeknownst to them this song turned out to be the greatest in rock'n'roll history. A few years prior the band Spirit released a song, ‘Taurus', which to them sounded very similar. However, it wasn't until 2014 that the band's bass player, Mark Andes, filed a legal report against Led Zeppelin for ‘'stealing'' their song. In 2016 Led Zeppelin won the case, and fast forward to September 2019, the case has been reopened. Later this month, an 11-judge panel will reconsider the outcome of the first trial, 48 years since the release of the song (Reed, R. 2019).

Source: Giphy

Now I know what you're thinking, such an old band, who cares, right? Wrong. This case is only the tip of the iceberg called ‘the music industry'. You'd think there's nothing wrong with being inspired by other musicians, however, more and more artists get sued for copyright infringement. On August 1 of this year, a federal jury in California decided that Katy Perry must pay Marcus Gray, who records under the name Flame, $2.78 million in damages, for creating her single ‘'Dark Horse'', which featured the same beat and instrumental elements as Marcus Gray's song ‘Joyful Noise' (Minkser, E. 2019).

Source: Giphy

In the same month, the British pop star Ed Sheeran announced that he would be taking a hiatus of 18 months, after facing yet another copyright infringement case. Musician Sam Chokri claims that Ed Sheeran used the song ‘Oh Why', which was released in 2015, for the chorus of his own song ‘Shape of You'. Sheeran denies the claim and says that Chokri is damaging his reputation, and blocking him from revenue as well. Sheeran will not receive any royalties from his song until the court decides the case (Resnikoff, P. 2019).

Listen here and judge for yourself:

If bigger artists like Led Zeppelin, Katy Perry, and Ed Sheeran, can face these consequences for creating music, what does this mean for starting musicians? There are a lot of songwriters out there who think that they're being ripped off, and when they see these huge headlines of how much money can be made, it makes it easy to file a lawsuit. Artists become afraid to write because 6 notes of their song might sound like someone else's work (Law arts. 2005). They cannot protect themselves against potential lawsuits, because how will they explain that they've never heard that other person's song before?

This so-called ‘copyright trolling', means that music will never be as free as it used to be. Smaller musicians will never be able to compete in this industry, and a lot of hard work will be in vain. Their creativity will be limited, in the off chance that their work somehow sounds a little similar to a song that was released years prior.

Source: Giphy

Will this be the end of the music industry as we know it? Stay tuned for more…