Is independent creation likely to happen in pop music?

Abstract

In this study we try to address the question of whether independent (re-)creations are likely to happen in pop music. The interest in this topic stems from the fact that the claim of an “independent creation” is a common defence strategy in copyright infringement lawsuits. We conducted a main experiment in which subjects were asked to invent short, “catchy” pop melodies to a given backing track over a very common chord sequence (I VI IV V). Additionally, we incorporated 5 melodies from hit songs over the same chords in a comparable tempo. The collected melodies were examined for similarities, between participants’ melodies and hit songs on the one hand, and between participants’ songs on the other. In each case at least two melody pairs with high similarity were found. A deeper analysis of these cases revealed that indeed independent (re-)creations might have taken place.

Keywords

creativity copyright infringement melodic similarity plagiarism pop music song-writing

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