Using Technology to Avoid Stealing Songs By Mistake

In 1960, The Chiffons published He's So Fine:



In 1970, George Harrison published the song My Sweet Lord:



In 1976, a lawsuit ended with Harrison having to pay over $500K in damages to the original song's publisher for subconsciously plagiarizing (ultimately, Harrison got the last laugh by ultimately buying the publisher).

Just recently, Joe Satriani has taken Coldplay to court for the same infringement for allegedly copying his original song If I could Fly.



So my question is, could there not be a technology solution to this problem? With online radio sites having matching algorithms based on wave analysis, chord progressions, etc. could there not be similar analysis done to create a checksum hash for every published song that if matched against a new song would be deemed too similar?

It would be a lot easier than relying on someone's subconscious, just purely random coincidence or some judge's interpretation of what music is to award royalties.

Or even better yet, we would go back to the days of Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi when musicians copied each other liberally and were able to advance their art without fear of reprisals from copyright lawyers.

Pandora's IP Blocking for Canadians isn't 100% Effective

As has been posted widely, Pandora was shut down in Canada due to license restrictions.

But Pandora's IP blocking mechanism isn't 100% - I just tried from my office computere here in Toronto and I could access it without any problems. I'm not sure what their criteria is for blocking but I'm just happy I can get through and still access the service.

Pandora is Being Run Out of Business by the RIAA

Are you one of the few people who hasn't tried Pandora yet? If not, then you should before the corporate interests of the music industry run it out of business.

Personally, I have probably about 300-400 CD's in my collection. I listen to a lot of music on a daily basis. I'm also really knowledgeable about the music over the past 100 years or so. One of my problems is that I've basically bought everything that I like - if you look at the average output of the music industry in a year, I might buy one or two CDs. I replaced all my vinyl years ago.

So when I discovered Pandora , I thought it was a god send - you put in any artist you want, and it will start playing music that sounds like them as a personalized radio station. Genius.

Unfortunately, the RIAA has just pushed the US copyright board to increase the royalties that are paid by Internet Radio stations through the roof in ways that show that they really still don't GET IT:

1. There is a $500 minimum fee per channel. The problem is my personalized radio station is now considered a channel in the way that a radio station broadcasting to thousands of people is a channel.

2. There are performance fees charged to Internet Radio that aren't charged to traditional broadcasters because traditional radio is seen as a "promotional service" for the music industry. Its amazing how you could view a non-measurable, non-transactable, and non-personalized radio station is a better promotional tool than Pandora!

3. Fees go up every year by much more than inflation, making the problem worse in future years.

4. The rates were based on a model defined by Mark Cuban and Yahoo when they did the deal for broadcast.com, a deal which as a model has been shelved and Mark admits was designed to squash the competition!

For more information, see:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/03/16/if-streaming-rates-stand-well-have-to-shutter-says-pandora-founder/
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000196

So enjoy Pandora as a very cool idea while it manages to survive!