Every Melody Has Been Copyrighted (and they're all on this hard drive)

Adam Neely · 1.8M views · 2020-02-10 · 10:32

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Overview

Adam Neely interviews Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin about their project to generate and copyright every possible melody as MIDI. The video explains their reasoning and how it bears on music copyright lawsuits.

On Hacker News

It is the go-to explainer whenever HN discusses brute-forcing melodies, copyright, or AI-generated content, since it features the project's creators.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2020–2022

Topics

Music theory, synthesis & production Law, policing & justice

What people said

willvarfar · 2020-02 · Strong recommendation
At the very beginning of this excellent interview [VIDEO] that I found in the comments here, they explain this. Apparently, for this to work, they have to "affix them to a physical medium". Strongly recommend watching that video! Excellent info.
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nonstickcoating · 2022-05 · Recommendation
This[0] is a video by Adam Neely, who frequently talks about the cluster f*ck that is copyright law with regards to music, interviewing two guys having done this (within some constraints). This[1] is the website linking to the dataset and code that was used to generate it. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]
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varispeed · 2021-04 · Recommendation
If someone automates music creation in the popular styles and then automates submitting it for copyright protection, then in not so distant future creation of any music will be illegal, as every nice sounding melody will be claimed. In a way this is what large labels do. They release a ton of similar sounding music just for that reason. I think the patent trolling equivalent in music world has not been discussed much. Check this video from Adam Neely: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Adam Neely, played through YouTube.

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