Great piece, as always. I'm not sure this is necessarily a victory for AI though. I'm not a fan of Sheeran--I'll take yours and Pitchfork's words that he doesn't create art of significant merit outside of its popularity--but nevertheless he did have a (not that good) story to sell about it. AI can't do that for the music it generates--yet--so there's still that advantage to humans. Though if people are already gorging themselves on anonymous streambait playlists of no artistic merit, I'm not sure how much the average listener will care about whether there's a real human and story behind future Sheeran-level dreck at a level lower than ghostwriting currently is. I'm not sure why but this reminds me a bit of when teenagers and rockists claim that music made via sampling or obviously non-analog means isn't 'real music'; it seems we might be at that stage of the conversation regarding AI in music in general.
Hey Damon. This is Jason. I met you and Naomi in Philly a few nights ago.
I recently wrapped up a music entrepreneurship class. Your newsletters often cover topics we are discussing in class. The professor frequently invited the class to share news or any topics we would like to discuss. Your newsletters often became the basis of a class discussion. I thought you may enjoy knowing that.
We were discussing this Sheeran thing in out last class which was a week or two ago.
At the end of the day, Marvin Gaye didn't write that groove, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single pop groove with a clearly distinguishable single copy-written source. This is what makes the earlier victory so bizarre and this one so warranted. Sure, Sheeran's co-operation helped, but more key was that this legal team actually made an argument which is more precise than "They didn't even listen to [alleged source material]" - In this case, that the "doo-wop groove" has been around much longer than Let's Get It On's riff on it, like in "Heart and Soul" - and even in Ed Townsend's "For Your Love," the guy who's suing Sheeran for his work on Let's Get It On years later. As far as AI, if anything the relevant aspect here isn't Sheeran's overt commercialism/hackwork, because AI isn't accurately described as a "blender" of cliché like Sheeran but as a "blurrer" of cliché - it's not mixing premade material into a slurry, it's making up material which might be found between various points, generating meaningless fuzz/blur which reminds our pattern-seeking brains of those points. The key is to emphasize the importance of the original points to the comprehensibility of the created blur - something that is harder than you'd think with humans, where the web of influence stretches back strangely, and easier than you'd think with computers, where there's always ultimately a clear set of inputs upon which the cliché is drawn. The key is advocating for legally enforceable models where that initial input is directly available in the made product - a fairly negligible task; think of how much information digital still photos hold about how they were taken, now that that technology is in all digital cameras. Sure, it's all slush, but there's a major difference in terms of defensibility.
This is the most detailed discussion I've seen on this particular case (thanks to commenters as well!) --- and on songwriting "originality" in general. You could go back to George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" in which the plagiarism was unconscious but, I think, George copped to it, saying, essentially:"Yeah, it's the same song." (At least as I remember it -- don't quote me!) And I remember the old saw: "Every blues song is stolen from every other blues song." But that goes back to the blues as true folk music, with no "author," and "floating verses" that showed up all over the place. In this case you're getting into more subtle questions of authorship. Think of all the jazz "compositions" based on the chord changes of popular standards, but considered original compositions because the original melody is never even alluded to, never mind the rhythmic patterns-- thank you, Charlie Parker! And then in the rock world, you've got Leon Russell, revealed in Bill Janovitz's new biography as so deeply insecure that he didn't consider "This Masquerade" original -- or at least original ENOUGH, because the chord changes came from the Matt Dennis standard "Angel Eyes." According to Janovitz, Russell thought that's why the song appealed to a jazz player liked George Benson, not because of any unique qualities of its own. I'll leave to to folks here to argue whether Russell was maybe a bit too self-critical. But it does leave open the question of how we determine something to be original. I think Damon would have made a good witness for the plaintiff here!
Great piece, as always. I'm not sure this is necessarily a victory for AI though. I'm not a fan of Sheeran--I'll take yours and Pitchfork's words that he doesn't create art of significant merit outside of its popularity--but nevertheless he did have a (not that good) story to sell about it. AI can't do that for the music it generates--yet--so there's still that advantage to humans. Though if people are already gorging themselves on anonymous streambait playlists of no artistic merit, I'm not sure how much the average listener will care about whether there's a real human and story behind future Sheeran-level dreck at a level lower than ghostwriting currently is. I'm not sure why but this reminds me a bit of when teenagers and rockists claim that music made via sampling or obviously non-analog means isn't 'real music'; it seems we might be at that stage of the conversation regarding AI in music in general.
Hey Damon. This is Jason. I met you and Naomi in Philly a few nights ago.
I recently wrapped up a music entrepreneurship class. Your newsletters often cover topics we are discussing in class. The professor frequently invited the class to share news or any topics we would like to discuss. Your newsletters often became the basis of a class discussion. I thought you may enjoy knowing that.
We were discussing this Sheeran thing in out last class which was a week or two ago.
I love hearing that! Thank you
At the end of the day, Marvin Gaye didn't write that groove, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single pop groove with a clearly distinguishable single copy-written source. This is what makes the earlier victory so bizarre and this one so warranted. Sure, Sheeran's co-operation helped, but more key was that this legal team actually made an argument which is more precise than "They didn't even listen to [alleged source material]" - In this case, that the "doo-wop groove" has been around much longer than Let's Get It On's riff on it, like in "Heart and Soul" - and even in Ed Townsend's "For Your Love," the guy who's suing Sheeran for his work on Let's Get It On years later. As far as AI, if anything the relevant aspect here isn't Sheeran's overt commercialism/hackwork, because AI isn't accurately described as a "blender" of cliché like Sheeran but as a "blurrer" of cliché - it's not mixing premade material into a slurry, it's making up material which might be found between various points, generating meaningless fuzz/blur which reminds our pattern-seeking brains of those points. The key is to emphasize the importance of the original points to the comprehensibility of the created blur - something that is harder than you'd think with humans, where the web of influence stretches back strangely, and easier than you'd think with computers, where there's always ultimately a clear set of inputs upon which the cliché is drawn. The key is advocating for legally enforceable models where that initial input is directly available in the made product - a fairly negligible task; think of how much information digital still photos hold about how they were taken, now that that technology is in all digital cameras. Sure, it's all slush, but there's a major difference in terms of defensibility.
Excellent article. It convinces me even more of how much a middle talent hack Sheeran is at making music that's devoid of "soul."
This is the most detailed discussion I've seen on this particular case (thanks to commenters as well!) --- and on songwriting "originality" in general. You could go back to George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" in which the plagiarism was unconscious but, I think, George copped to it, saying, essentially:"Yeah, it's the same song." (At least as I remember it -- don't quote me!) And I remember the old saw: "Every blues song is stolen from every other blues song." But that goes back to the blues as true folk music, with no "author," and "floating verses" that showed up all over the place. In this case you're getting into more subtle questions of authorship. Think of all the jazz "compositions" based on the chord changes of popular standards, but considered original compositions because the original melody is never even alluded to, never mind the rhythmic patterns-- thank you, Charlie Parker! And then in the rock world, you've got Leon Russell, revealed in Bill Janovitz's new biography as so deeply insecure that he didn't consider "This Masquerade" original -- or at least original ENOUGH, because the chord changes came from the Matt Dennis standard "Angel Eyes." According to Janovitz, Russell thought that's why the song appealed to a jazz player liked George Benson, not because of any unique qualities of its own. I'll leave to to folks here to argue whether Russell was maybe a bit too self-critical. But it does leave open the question of how we determine something to be original. I think Damon would have made a good witness for the plaintiff here!
I am ready for my “expert witness” close up!
I always thought that George Harrison was just lying about the plagiarism being unconscious
I think style should be free of copyright like it is now.
And the absence of style? 😉
Marvin Gaye had style 😎