YouTuber Adam Neely posted a great video where he sits down with Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin about their project to copyright every possible melody (!). They used a computer to “brute force” every possible melody to make a point to the world of copyright infringement. From a law perspective this project was created to help protect artists or at least change the public perception of what constitutes music copyright infringement. You can download their project with every melody variation at http://allthemusic.info
Here’s the Ted Talk called “Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl | TEDxMinneapolis”
“In the litany of copyright infringement lawsuits, technology lawyer and musician Damien Riehl demonstrates that music is merely math, and has a finite number of possible melodies. If you’ve ever thought a song you like sounded similar to another, the culprit may not be an unethical forger, but rather the limited mathematical musical equations that our favorite artists have to work with. Current copyright law is at risk of severely limiting future music creation and future human creativity. This talk suggests a new way to handle these legal cases. Damien Riehl is a technology lawyer with a B.S. in music. After beginning to code in 1985, and for the web in 1995, he has worked for the chief judges of state and federal courts; litigated for a decade; taught law-school copyright classes; and led teams in software development, digital forensics, proactive cybersecurity, reactive cybersecurity incidents, and world-scale investigations. Damien’s combined experience in the law, technology, and music has inspired his most recent project—copyrighting billions of unique melodies. “
Interesting!! What do you think??!!
UPDATE: 02-24-2020
Turns our Damien used this site for some of his research 🙂
Full circle: I used https://t.co/aazk3uhPZu as a resource of similar-sounding songs — to inspire and bolster my TEDx Talk. Now @songsoundslike has cited my talk! Please do keep up the good work. There are only so many notes! https://t.co/a5ggov6zFI
— Damien Riehl (@damienriehl) February 24, 2020