YouSaid · the spoken record

Olivia Rodrigo

lines on the record: 53
first: 2021-09-15
most recent: 2021-09-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Did a piece recently on the worst kept secret in pop music, which is that artists who don't participate in songwriting are often asking or requiring that songwriters give over their publishing credit. It's a really fun conversation with one of today's biggest songwriters, Emily Warren, and you'll learn all about how this is actually changing the structure and the sound of music in addition to the business structures.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because we're talking about these are contractual obligations set up by humans deciding who's getting paid out. And so often the music industry acts like it's a zero-sum game where the best way to innovate is to get more of your rights and get as much of the pie as I possibly can out of fear that you could end up in a situation like 1999 again where NAPSA destroys the entire music industry and all revenues disappear. And so If humans are acting like that and they're creating contracts that are constantly trying to weasel songwriters out of payments, then what you're going to have is weird situations where people are getting sued left and right to try to claim intellectual property placements in places where money is flowing. It's incredibly distorted and I don't think yet.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At kind of a standstill. We're in a moment still deciding we're going to look for future court cases that are going to decide what can you artistically express without having to pay somebody. That's what I'm looking out for.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't speak to the discourse back and forth between tech and music, but what I can say is that we are seeing the financialization of the music industry in its consolidation. There has been a lot of new capital moving around people realizing that these digital assets might have a long life because every single time someone does a dance on TikTok to a song, you might capture a stream. So you see publishers selling their publishing catalogs to huge private equity firms where investors are getting basically like derivatives of ownership of parts of songs. You and I can literally go to a website right now called Royalty Exchange and start to purchase tiny portions of publishers' catalogs and participate in the streaming payouts of those songs and other publishing rights. If I had to summarize, musical creativity is dealing with the most difficult forces of finance and capitalism.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I hear from my reporting is that songwriters are more nervous than ever. Songwriters and artists are speaking a lot less candidly about who their influences are because of a fear of Olivier Rodrigo type situation. Talk about your influences. You're going to have to pay them. And I think that we are seeing songwriters deeply anxious about whether or not they are unintentionally borrowing and are going to lose the potential fortunes that they could make off of US radio hits. What does this mean for creativity? I think that anytime that we are starting to litigate the building blocks of an art form, we start to inhibit the way in which people express themselves, which to me goes directly counter to the purpose of setting up copyright protection, which is there to incentivize the creation of new modes of expression, not”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know exactly how this song was constructed, but Rolling Stone has actually just recently reported that publishers are putting together songwriting camps where they're saying, hey, a bunch of songwriters, here are some songs we own, go create interpolations off of those and see if we can create new hits. So that is definitely an active strategy that publishers are taking right now. I don't know exactly how the Anne-Marie song was written.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2002 was not a good personal year for me, so all of that just makes me feel bad, but I'm sure a lot of people get really excited when they hear all those references.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is clearly a situation where you're like, let's interpolate on that lyrical idea in order to use that former intellectual property to get people excited and nostalgic, etc.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish that I had deeper reporting to answer that very specific question. But yeah, there are three major labels. The three major labels are also the three biggest music publishers. And so I'm sure they're constantly getting on phone calls with each other all the time. But it's important to note also, Neila, that these publishers are also often intentionally interpolating old hits to try to create new ones. And so you could look at a song like Anne Marie's 2002. This is a song we've talked about on our show a bunch, but if you go to the chorus, it's literally, oops, I got 99 problems singing bye, bye, bye. Hold up if you want to go and take a ride with me, better hit me, baby, one more time. It's like, boom, boom, boom, 90s reference 90s reference 90s reference, or I guess 2002's reference, if you will.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, this is getting pretty gnarly, pretty gray area here. But, you know, because it could be confused, I'm sure that there was a decision to, let's make sure the credit is given, or maybe we got a phone call. I'm entirely speculating about how it happened. I don't know how it happened. It hasn't been reported. But yeah, Olivia Newton-John has a credit on this song for something which is some courts might argue de minimis as such a small usage of a thing, which is not actually protectable under copyright. It's just something you don't want to have to litigate. And so that's probably why they're making this decision.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They gave her the interpolation credit. Yeah, we're talking about five notes here, right? Like, I definitely, talking about, can you confuse these? It occurs in the exact same rhythmic placement going exactly into the same place of both choruses and can be argued as sort of the main hook or most memorable moment. Now, does that make people equal songwriters? No. Do I think that you should probably be able to interpolate these things because they're basic building blocks and pretty hard to distinguish?”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generally, I think so. I think rhythms are hard to copyright. It's why something like the Migos flow, they can't copyright that because every drummer does that same thing. And I'm sure other people have used that exact rhythm. And so we are getting into situations of building blocks. However, one of the things that is always going to be looked at is how is that piece of material used? The fact that it's the main hook in both songs is going to definitely raise the heckles of any music publisher and say, you know, we really want to get ahead of this one because, again, we don't know how a jury is going to decide this. Let's just hand over credit immediately. Let's get ahead of the press cycle and make sure that right side Fred puts out a really lovely press statement about how excited they are to participate with Taylor Swift, I would be too if I was going to get a meaningful portion of this song. Like they handled this one.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Litigation risk always. You might lose. But as I said, the worst thing is you might lose and you might get a new precedent that might fundamentally alter the music business. So if you're a publisher and you own pieces of these songs, you might not want to expose yourself to not just this risk, but all of the future risk that this case might create.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jury could very well say, Yeah, well, this was infringed, and you might have to hand over all of the song rather than just give an interpolation credit. I think that is the fear. It's the fear of Michael Bolton. I apologize. It's the fear of the case that Michael Bolton versus the Isley Brothers sets up. It's this sort of idea of thin copyright and the idea that you might be copywriting the sort of the curation of all these different elements together.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We go back to the case of good for you and Paramore's misery business, there's more similarities. They share more or less the same song structure. They're both about issues of heartbreak. They have similar melodic contours. They're in somewhat similar-ish or adjacent genres, if you will. The chord progressions change in really similar ways, like the verse chord progression is the same in both songs. The chorus chord progression is the same in both songs. The choruses both start on the same melodic note. They both use a lot of rhythmic syncopation. So if you were to argue this in court, you'd probably say, well, all of these things combined, the structuring of all of these disparate elements, which are probably themselves not protectable, together the curation of them is protectable. And under that world of copyright”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Substantively similar, like they were having to use many of those same elements, which is to say, like, maybe love is a wonderful thing as a title other people could use, but if you also are using a 12-bar blues thing, and if you also fade your song out in the same way, then all of those things together would say, well, court decides, Michael Bolton, you might not have even meant to, but hey, you have infringed on the thin copyright of the Asley Brothers. So you might be thinking like, what does this have to do with Olivia Origo?”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happens here is that you have a case of what we might call thin copyright. This is not a concept in the copyright code, but it's something that judges talk about a lot. It's the idea that all of the elements of a song that you're trying to claim may individually be not protectable by copyright, which is to say like a 12-bar blues progression, a idea like love is a wonderful thing, pretty common statement. But the confluence of all of those elements together, how they are structurally placed, and the combination ends up creating a unique copyrightable, protectable work. And it's given a thin copyright. And the thin copyright test says that if someone's to borrow from the ILZ brothers, like Michael Bolton supposedly does, that they would need to be”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, okay, this is an interesting case because I think the main concern here is about whether or not people want to deal with what can happen in court. There's a number of things court is expensive. Court can destroy someone's public perception, better to get in front of things and just give the credit up front, give a small percentage, say, hey, I was inspired by this thing, and just deal with it that way, then all the potential blowback, including setting up new precedent that could hurt future cases. So when you ask, would she win this one in court? I don't know, not just because a jury is likely to be musically uneducated and say, hey, these things kind of sound alike, sure, let's award it to paramour, but because there is one other very important case that brings all of this into question and it brings us to Michael Bolton”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And I think this is a case for musicians where they're like, thank goodness, because that idea of going down those four notes is so common that nobody should be able to own that.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like A minor is one of those first chords that a guitarist learns, and you're going to do like a Or There's only so many ways around that”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's exactly what is basically decided here chromatic line over an A minor chord. Yeah, they're the same. The melody on top, not the same. The piece that might make you think, hey, they sound alike is, again, not protectable by copyright because it's so fundamental. This is back to the question of building blocks. Just for the sake of it, like...”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and especially that they were used differently to, for example, this riff is used all the way through the joyful noise song, but Katie Perry only uses it in the verse, so it's not the core part of the song. It's the chorus. They suggest that both because of the usage and the actual amount of material used and the kind of material, these are just not the same song. And so it sets up this case where we have to think about, can a simple eight-note musical phrase be something open to copyright?”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of melody, descending over a very common rhythm and plenty of great analysis has been done about this. I especially point to the YouTuber Adam Neely who shows that Bach has used this exact same Melody, countless people have used melodies just like it, and that in fact the idea of writing songs over a simple, common little riff like this called an ostinato has precedent going all the way back to the Renaissance where composers would intentionally take other people's baselines and write new original material over them. And so basically court says these eight notes, they don't get protection in the way in which they're used. It really just they're not substantially similar. These are not the same songs. Katie Perry initially loses but wins an appeal.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, courts do consider whether or not someone has had access to the prior work or whether or not these were independent co-creations of the same idea. That is a factor, actually less and less now in how courts decide cases. But it is a piece of it. The bigger issue here is do they share an original piece of musical material, which is objectively creative and protectable? And in this case, you might say, well, subjectively they sound alike, but the objective decision here is that the core little synth melody that sounds alike is not a unique enough creative expression to be protected by copyright law. And I think this is a very wise decision because you basically have a meeting.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly what the blurred lines case does is that it suggests that maybe a vibe or the building blocks can be copyrightable material be questioned in the following years”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the overarching concern, I think, of every musician who's paying attention to these cases is that a lot of these decisions are being made over fundamental building blocks. And so can a melody which is just sort of a Miri dough melody or a chord progression that uses the foremost common chords in pop music as the Olivier Rodrigo paramour songs both do? Can we start to say that these are original creations? That's the great concern because, hey, we know that copyright is set up to protect the development of the arts and sciences. And if we start copywriting the building blocks, can we keep developing new material?”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was an important distinction here actually, most of the case is decided on procedural issues, and there was no determination about why the Marvin Gay song was objectively a piece of original protectable material. And so the concern is that you can copyright a vibe, but the court didn't actually say how or when or under what circumstances. So it left things sort of like big, open, and into this gray area. Yeah, the following couple of years, copyright cases explode because people see an opportunity.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And the argument that the Marvin Geyer state made was basically that these songs sound alike, sound alike, meaning that they borrow a common constellation of elements, the harmony, the rhythm, the keyboard, the percussion, all that kind of stuff. Not that they copied verbatim lyrics or whole strings of long melodies.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's worth coming back at some point to the Paramore Olivier Darrigo case because there are actually maybe even more similarities between those songs than there are to the gay and thick case. Because if you look at the Marvin Gay melody and hook, it's really not the same as blurred lines. Yes, they share some interesting drum production, but to me it might suggest that I don't mean to offend, but like Nili, like maybe you're listening isn't super dedicated in this genre. And so if you don't know the genre while you're like, yeah, they sound alike, but we could probably go and find plenty of other grooves which are kind of in the same kind of feel. And whether or not you could, there's a question of whether or not a groove, a style is something that we should be able to copyright. You know, go back to like the Duop era. DuWop bands might sound very similar to other people.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hear songs which are obviously in conversation with each other. I hear some pretty clear inspiration from blurred lines to got to give it up. You have cowbell rhythms, an offbeat electric keyboard jumping on the offbeat. You have a similar kind of groove. And the reason why a lot of people are really wanting to avoid going to court is that an uneducated jury might say, hey, those sound the same to me. But as a musician, I would say, yeah, those are two similar grooves and other people have made other similar grooves. And courts have more or less in the past upheld that you can't copyright drum production. You can't copyright chords. You can't copyright the instrumentation and choices of those things. And so this has gotten people really all riled up between those who think”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, quick pause Do you know that every single Frell Williams hit more or less starts with four quarter notes at the very beginning of the beat? It's his signature.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, thank you. And in 2015, there are a set of public lawsuits with the Marvin Gay estate over his song Got to Give It Up. This case changed everything because if you try to apply the extrinsic test, are they substantively the same? Do they have objectively unique creative material they might share a vibe, a groove, but they don't share the same chords, they don't share the same melody. They share elements that are not protectable under copyright, like some percussion sounds and a feel. Yet... The jury sides with the Marvin Gay estate and sets up this challenging precedent about whether or not other songs that are copying someone else's style might be set for a lawsuit in the future”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so the blurred lines case is where Frell Williams and Robin Thick put out their Morally questionable song Blurred Lines.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a ton of money there to put it in context I spoke with the songwriter Emily Warren who has written songs for Dua Lipa and The Chainsmokers and what she told me is that basically if you're a songwriter and you get one or two major songs at US Radio, top 40 radio, you're pretty set to retire.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Order to recoup on your intellectual property, which is currently earning probably negligible revenue in streaming in other places. But when there's an opportunity for a big thing that has hit at radio or might have a big sink license in a film, yeah, you're going to go and see if you can get a piece of it. And if you look at the public record of songs which are currently under litigation, they're only songs which are succeeding overwhelmingly. It's very clear that the motivation here is let's get a piece of something which is a giant treasure chest. It's not about fairness and, hey, this is my song. Those kind of cases aren't happening. Not publicly anyway.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's about right. We have seen a shift where the music industry has gone from being a physical goods business to an intellectual property business. And when a song starts to succeed, we see all kinds of public lawsuits and private settlements.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good for you. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, if anything at best, it was inspired by, and because of the success of this song, they were required to give some credit to the inspiration because they feared going to court. And so the people who wrote Misery Business deserve a nod, if you will. It feels much more like a nod to me than like you are equal co-writers, even if the deal negotiated requires a 50% cut. But I think it's really important to distinguish the sort of legal structure and the payment structure from the actual cultural perspective on how we view interpolation. Like good for you is its own song. There's no doubt about that.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, all credits are going to be negotiated privately, unless decided by a court. And typically an interpolation credit is a lesser songwriting credit than an actual songwriting credit. People don't distinguish these very well. I think it's important to culturally understand regardless of how we feel, whether an interpolation credit was deserved. Interpolation credit for me does not feel like a co-writer of the song. And oftentimes the way that people write bad headlines around this is like Paramore co-wrote.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this has a lot to do with what you were saying at the beginning of the episode, which is major shifts in the music industry. It's unlike Misery Business by Paramore is no longer getting CD sales. Streaming doesn't necessarily pay that well, especially if you don't own your masters. And so any legacy song benefits from getting a songwriting credit on a song which is doing extremely well at US Radio. There's a lot of money in getting a credit. And here they're given an interpolation credit, which is to say they didn't really copy anything from the song. You sort of copied the idea of the song. And this credit was handed over voluntarily in a non-court decision. This was negotiated between two different parties, but it's entirely a financial decision. This song's doing well. We had a song that was kind of like it. Let's see if we can get a piece of this song. We see this over and over and over again.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's exactly what happened, right? People went on TikTok, they started doing mashups. Look how well these songs go together. And there's particularly good reasons why they're almost in the same key. They use the exact same chord progression. They're both roughly about issues of heartbreak and misery of the teenage relationships, if you will. And they have a common melodic contour. Like the melodies doing a roughly kind of like descent slowly over a melodic phrase with a lot of syncopation. There's common musical elements, but they, of course, are distinct lyrics. They are not quite in the same genre as you pointed, like the guitar tones are pretty different. And they obviously have different melodies. They're similar-ish. They work well together, but they're fundamentally different.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. The material in particular that we're listening to is that moment of yelling where there's a high level of angst both artists are sort of yelling in declarative, mostly quarter note statements on the root note of the key. It's a very common musical expression. I think it would be very hard to say that that even meets the intrinsic test. Like either of these things are particularly wholly original outside of the lyric. Like the actual musical component of yelling in that kind of way feels like, yeah, but anybody can do that.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Objective elements of songwriting to figure out whether or not the thing that we're listening to is truly an original construction. And then if it's determined that the two pieces at hand share things that are objectively similar, then it also will go to an intrinsic test. And the intrinsic test is basically this objective, like, do these things sound alike to you, Jerry? And if those tests are met, usually a decision is made. So I think we should do the same. We should look at things objectively and say, like, is the thing that we're listening to objectively an original musical creation? And also just like the gut check, does this feel all like?”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When a court listens to a song, currently they apply a two-part test to determine whether or not something is borrowing, if you will. First, there's an extrinsic test, which basically says, let's get an expert musicologist to look at the”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Covered this story weeks ago, maybe months ago at this point, when it was just people on TikTok saying, hey, these songs kind of mash up. Like, this is clearly theft, which is an interesting point of conversation. And then that sort of public campaign turns into, actually, supposedly they were in touch beforehand. You never know really. You can only speculate as to were they really in touch beforehand with each other's publishers, but yeah, paramour after the fact gets a credit and has turned into a much larger discourse on intellectual theft and I think important conversations of sexism and who gets accused of theft, but you have a very divided internet right now over whether or not Olivia Rodrigo is making original creative works or she's simply taking from pre-existing material.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Olivia Rodrigo made a great album full of extremely catchy songs with really great narratives. They're fun songs. There's a lot of different genres that appeal to people of lots of different generations. There's a critical consensus this is a really good album. And it's done exceptionally well. And as the album has rolled out more singles and those songs have succeeded at radio and streaming. And so people on the internet start to notice some similarities with her influences, connections to Taylor Swift songs, connections to Paramore songs, connections to songs even by Elvis Costello. Sort of like hints of, I would call it mostly influence, the chatter on the internet then turns into actually handing over songwriting credit to a number of these artists.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is entirely these are business structures and they have huge consequences for how music is made, who's getting paid, even how songs are structured and how they sound.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In streaming, it works totally different. More than 80% of the royalty payouts go to the master recording, whereas the publishing royalties are usually hovering around like 12, 13%.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you, as the recording artists, also have a songwriting credit, then you get paid. Yes. But just for the master write does not get paid out, meaning the labels don't get paid. It's only the actual performance, the publishing. Yes, the songwriters.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. You can sort of boil it down to three main revenue sources. There are as many, but you have streaming, which is the main revenue source at this point. It has exceeded all other music revenues. And in streaming, the vast majority of the royalty is for the master recording. So you want to own the actual recording itself. The next meaningful chunk of recording revenues is in performance royalties. And performance royalties equate to publishing. The biggest portion of that would probably be for radio. Technically, when a song is played on the radio, it's a performance of that piece. And the songwriters who own the publishing collect revenues from that. There's also a very small part of the music industry called synchronization rights, which is where you put music to video. That is a split between both the master and the publishing. But in general, if you look at over”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And in a lot of cases, the new recordings sound better. And frankly, most people won't be able to tell the difference. And I think her hope is that people start streaming and using the re-recorded version so that she starts collecting royalties off of those master recordings.”
2021-09-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · It's brutal out here: Olivia Rodrigo and how the music business makes songwriters fight over credits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source