"Music is math, but the business is textbook American economics."

Welcome to the Age of Pop ‘Plagiarism’

In 2019, the question of if and how a song has been copied is an incredibly complicated one

By Craig Jenkins

"The commercial viability of songs that seem like little Matryoshka dolls, packed with allusions to and samples of other people’s work, is a function of the changing ways we experience music. Playlist algorithms lead us to songs that resemble the ones we already like. (Does a derivative band like the Led Zeppelin-lite quartet Greta Van Fleet grow without “recommended if you like” features?) Music pipes into our ears through cheapie phone and laptop speakers, through earbuds and AirPods that offer decent-but-not-world-class sound. It’s often made and digested quickly. Less and less people buy CDs each year. We stream songs we never get to feel like we own. It stands to reason that in a climate where music is like wallpaper, a pleasantry that colors rooms without taking up any corporeal space, certain stigmas about acceptable borrowing and copying in the minds of the listener would lift, leading savvy creators to chase each other’s market shares. Music is math, but the business is textbook American economics. The sure bet is king."