Are Musicians Copycats?

The music industry is filled with different artists singing various genres with the use of many tools to create music. Nowadays, with the addition of AI in the world, the question comes up as to whether the music that is generated through AI is actually legal and can be copyrighted as owned by someone.

On today’s episode of ‘Yours Lawfully’ we are excited to have with us an esteemed international copyright lawyer, Mr. Florian Koempel who has acted as the British Copyright Council Representative of the World Intellectual Property Organization and is currently serving as an advisor for a variety of clients in the creative sector including UK Music Ltd, the Music Publishers Association, the British Copyright Council and C8 Associates. He also convenes postgraduate courses on International Copyright Law and Music Industry Contracts at Queen Mary University of London. Mr. Koempel, along with our hosts - Ms. Aishwarya Girinarayanan, Ms. Vishruthi Karthi and Ms. Federica Monteleone explore themes such as sampling, interpolation and the use of AI applications in the music industry by touching upon Ed Sheeran’s IP cases, Taylor Swift’s re-recordings and Ava Max’s use of sampling and interpolation to show how these applications are used as the world evolves using popular cases and examples to accompany them.

Note to listeners: We would like to inform our listeners that the episode has been recorded on 20th March 2024 and that the speaker refers to the involvement of Marvin Gaye’s estate in the controversy (3:55 to 4:04) which has not explicitly been mentioned in the audio.

We hope that you have a wonderful time listening to our episode! :)