When I was younger I always wondered if there was a limit on how much music humans can create. This is def one of the more interesting TED talks on here
you don't actually need to generate every single melody. just enough to disrupt creative liberty. i admit the number would still be very large, but any disruption by a big player (maybe Amazon) would be catastrophic.
@@chuheihkg "We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes." So I have some news for you: If we restrict ourselves to one octave (8 different notes), the exact amount is 429981696. (About 430 million) If we count every key on a piano as a note (so that's 88 possible notes), the exact amount is 92885869784266333550318482747592186663612968312311404275495006694290687472567021380958888656896. Or, in English, just under 92 trigintillion.
it is infinite in many ways. just think about the computation about rhythmic values in a melodie, which is the absolute part of a song... this guy is not a composer... just fiddling with computer algoritms.
No, that's bs people with no actual knowledge of music like to say to sound smart. It's the same as with language. When writing prose, can you unwittingly replicate a sentence someone else used, or a whole plot, the protagonist, or maybe the title? Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't write anything original at all. Plus context is key. Same goes for melody. Composers or producers can arrange/orchestrate the same melody in so many different ways that the casual listener wouldn't probably tell it's the same thing. The possibilities are close to infinite.
They already did release it on their website, along with all the code for the generation algorithm. It's all open source too. Looking at the files right now.
Imagine that Frederic Chopin or Mozart could've hypothetically played the melody from Linkin Park- In the End, or any other contemporary melody when playing piano, just by accident or something. It's entirely possible. Mindblowing.
I'm just making a stab at this, but classical and romantic music is far more complex than a pop song's structure. A Mozart melody might take up, for example, 30 notes. Beethoven's Fifth, everyone can hum the first four notes, followed by the next four notes, but how many notes follow that? Good luck counting lol. But for the record, classical composers often plagiarized themselves (Bach was notorious) and even Rachmaninoff apparently subconsciously rewrote a church piece he'd heard as a child much later in his life... but this to me is more remarkable than anything to be frightened by.
Shouldn't the law read "anyone can use any melody, as long as you do not infringe upon another artists right to make money from their work." I'm not a lawyer, so I can't right this in legal speak... You can argue that a melody is math, and since you can't copyright an equation, you can't copyright a melody!
don't mind me, i'm just waiting for the day that damien riehl gets copyrighted by all of the beatles melodies that are in that terabyte drive. that will be the most interesting and most expensive thing to come out of this.
There is no copyright on words like "Hey" "a" "sad" "Jude" "don't" "bad" "take" "song" "make" "it" "better". But if you take that and put it into order there clearly is infringement there. Same should go for music. Small 4-12 note sections shouldn't be looked at under the microscope, but more in musical context of the whole composition.
That was excellent thank you for your work! Yet; I was wondering considering there are more tonal systems than equal temperament of western music with only 12 distinctive tones. The number of permutations of melodies is also infinite, like a paintings number of brush stokes, if we include any tonal system that is existing or when imagining any derivative. One could make up any custome scale in cents or hertz; making the number of notes infinit..? Of course this is more theoretical and might miss any practical application to the real world! Keep making music!
Yes, you're absolutely right: We're covering the vast majority of songs that are litigated. The odds of a non-western temperament (e.g., 24-tone) getting sued over is tiny. It'll probably never happen. So we're covering the primary use cases: Major, Minor, 12-tone. Thanks for your note!
And how do they prove that the composer intentionally copied the melody from another composer? it's impossible to prove. It turns out that the copyright holders have raked in all the music and are taking tribute for it. Then they launch these sounds through the media, loudspeakers, etc., saturating the brain of the newly-born composer...
melodies and notes are like paint it's limited, while words and melodies are like a canvas it also means someone can own all the songs if they can buy the melodies
This is brilliant work. You know… when you copyright a song, there should be a process that determines if it even qualifies considering the current system in place. Otherwise l, what’s the point if this can still happen. Sickening.
How about we finally change the laws? Intellectual property has been problematic since the very beginning, and with a globalised connected world it's not likely to get any less so unless we fundamentally change the laws and how we perceive the issue.
How to infringe pop lyrics: use "come back", "don't leave me", "sit on my d", "baby", "you're my everything", "have a good time", "8-string", "drove my van" or a combination of those lines
There’s a finite amount of melodies THAT SELL RECORDS. No one is trying to rip off Sun Ra and nobody owns the right to an Am chord. Hopefully this theory will get tested in the courtroom some day and win before corporations own everything.
I've been working as a songwriter for 30 years in the Latin Market. I have 256 recorded and released songs, of course copyrighted some of them controlled by Warner Chappell, Some Pier Music and others Universal music Publishing. If I understand what he is saying is that he copyrighted all possible note combinations and put them on public domain? Which of course would include my entire 256 recorded songs catalogue along with my thousands of non recorded songs. Well if my songs were registered before he did that, then I don't think he has the right to put them on public domain not with my songs not with anyone else's songs previously registered. Im sorry but You can't put in public domain what you don't own. Besides I don't think this guy is trying to protect or liberate songwriters or composers in fact I think he is trying to take away copyrights from them. The ability to make money with your creation overtime. Next step would be make composers to work for a 1 time buy out work for hire fee and force them to give up their songwriting royalties. Which that is already going on. Media Networks are trying to force composers and songwriters to give up royalties. I wouldn't be surprised if those guys are behind this.
I'm struggling with this right now. I made a song several years ago with plans to use it as the main theme of a video game. I posted it to the internet, and it got a couple hundred views. Now, a new game coming out this year, the sequel to a very popular franchise, is using the same exact melody. So, I am almost positive that they never heard my song before. What I'm scared of is getting myself sued for using the same melody in a game.
You don't have to worry about that. Because if you wrote before hearing it from the other game. You already have the proof in your computer. When you first record it or program it. Your computer marks the dat as you probably already know. Therefore you have the date. If the date is prior for their creation they don't have anything on you. Cased close. Won't go any further.
If you are in the United States, you already have established copyright for the song. It is the newcomer that is infringing on your rights. They would lose any action in court against you if it went that far. You may wish to consider preserving the evidence of your own work, submit it for a copyright registration (currently about a $55 fee), and start crowdfunding for the legal fees to cover the lawsuit you will be starting.
@@misterlyle. Thanks for the advice. Although, in this particular situation I couldn't bring myself to sue, as my own project gets closer to fruition I will have to prepare for a proper response in case I am sent a cease-and-desist. I don't really know enough about how these things actually play out to know exactly what I need, but I will be able to get in touch with a lawyer for advice if it comes to that.
If we just find a way to perform to all those melodies in a video, we could listen to it while we're sleeping, driving, etc. Then if we ever get sued, we could say "I actually heard that melody first when it was in public domain" and the entire problem would go away.
10:54 - No, that won't happen. Even if they keep just 12 notes, and only 88 keys/notes on a standard piano, that would create over 216 _sextillion_ melodies which at even just a single byte per melody would take up over 186 _zettabytes_ which you definitely could not store on a hard-drive to make it count as automatically copyrighted, forget about 100 notes. The most you could do would be to write down a _description_ of the melodies instead of the melodies themselves, which doesn't count.
While there are 88 keys on some keyboards, those are not all separate notes. It doesn't matter if you play a song in B flat or A minor, the notes are the same for a melody. There are only 12 actually notes weather you have a keyboard with 12 keys or 1200.
Also the octave does not matter. A melody doesn't change because I shifted up/down an octave or so. That limits the song space by a lot. The real number eater is when you have long melodies. But a melody is rarely more than 1 dozen or so notes long and even at twice that length, it can be set to copyrightable form. You may not be able to cover them all, but you can cover most of the useful ones.
@@Bhatakti_Hawas yes, im broadening the application of "access" does access to something easily accessible excuse knowing about it? rhetorical question
These guys are musical HEROES.. they've created ACTUAL and FACTUAL melodies that are TANGIBLE and EXIST and copyrighted them as public domain to save the music.. This is what makes them heroes in my book.
the court would like to know: did you or did you not have access to your parent's genetic material when you created your own? all of life is copyright infringement. when the prokaryotes lawyer up we are all screwed.
In Western music theory there are 12 different notes in an infinite amount of octaves. An octave = the distance between a given frequency and double or half of that = 440hz is the same note as 220 hz just in different octaves. Outside the Western world cultures have divided the octave space into up to more than 50! different notes - and not only the 12 we have in the west. Riehl is wrong in stating that there only are 8 different notes plus wrong in many other statements. And in a bar there are way over 64 different places to place your note if you count in 64th and triplets, sixtuplets and so on. I bet he only used 16. I get his point, but he understands very little about music theory despite his claim of credentials. That makes his algorithm embarrasingly flawed. And to repeat myself: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do is SEVEN different notes since Do is mentioned twice - like CDEFGABC. Even kids know that. He should have said "most popular melodies in the west are written using the Ionian or Aolian scales which both contains only seven notes. There are in total 12 different notes and therefore only 12 keys".
Music really shouldn't have a copywrite on it. Unless someone blatanly copies a song, changing it a bunch to make something that sounds similar but not the same is how everything else in the world works anyways. Buildings are constructed from the same design patterns and science is done with the same formulas.
Right, but how would you prove those cases where someone DOES blatantly copy a song? They're going to deny it and use the same excuses a legitimate songwriter does.
@@swagar If you but forgo this misheld belief that capitalism is the only structure that the world can take, this problem becomes no problem. Provided of course one's sense of self worth is not founded on the opinions of others.
@@swagar I'd say give them a 5 year copyright hold on a song, then after that, the money they make comes from concerts and merch. In the cases of big labels ripping melodies off smaller ones, the songs usually sound way differently anyways (like the katy perry darkhorse one). After 5 years the song already had made 90% of its money and is considered old anyways.
These dudes attempt to initially copyright this, so they can put all this melodies as public domain. Actually it is a great card to play for all out there.
bc it was written as sheet music, the piece is copyrighted. however, i can copyright the same thing by laying out all half rests instead of measure rests, put in a different time signature and key
Regardless, thanks for fighting back against a broken copyright system. It's important work and a good workaround until we can get more meaningful reform. I just was surprised to see such a quiet video on youtube. It is, by far, the quietest one I've ever encountered since I started checking the stats widget a couple years ago. Previously, the quietest one was -15 dB.
Thank you for this service. The idea that George Harrison pulled back on writing music is a catastrophe to art. The ingenuity of this project is really helpful for establishing all art is prior art, especially in our songs.
@@christopermitchell5019 That HAS been the conventional wisdom, however, recently, it has started happening & people have WON! Rick Beato has some good videos on this subject referencing some recent cases. Look up the Katy Perry case as one example.
He should upload recordings of all the music to TH-cam, see if he gets hit by any of the big companies, then sue them when they try to take away his rights.
Wouldnt it be the same thing, but the other way around. Those big companies actually do have the copyright to the song, so the randomly generated melody has already been copyrighted.
@@dubliostower That's a can of worms a record label won't open: If they sue Damien for copyright infringement, win or lose, Damien can now sue them for every single song they'll ever release - and use the record label's own testimony against them.
As a musician, a song writer, a sound engineer, a producer, and a recording studio owner who also has had a record label in the past, I think this is a talk that needs to be had. Money grabbing litigation is the worst thing this world has created and it has impacted the creativity and freedom of the arts. This reduces the quality of the art we can enjoy and stifles creativity, without even considering the way it can cause the creative well to dry up. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and everything we take in is an influence, there is bound to be a sign of that in any work you create in the future, and that is not a bad thing necessarily. And even if someone does copy your song, are you just passed that theirs is superior? Go out and redo it then and make it even better and use their improved version as the stepping stone to take it rob the next level, or are you not capable of doing that?
Yes, well said. All art iterates upon the past. Originality is less important than authenticity. If copyright is (arguably) meant to encourage art proliferation, then the copyright laws should align with that goal.
Shoulders of Giants originates from when Newton stole all Robert Hooke's work and took the credit- he used it as a slight since Hooke was a hunchback due to, ya know, actually using a microscope
That's all well and good until you find out some millionaire took your stuff and made a lot of money without credit/royalties to you. Of course, they will never admit to it. Then when you try to take their stuff, they copyright claim your azz!
That's super easy to do. In mpv just hit 0 to turn up volume (make sure you have volume-max=200 in your ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf file first). This of course assumes that you also have youtube-dl installed and are viewing this video in mpv via youtube-dl script.
Pure genius. On their website in the FAQ they illustrate how it might protect someone from a lawsuit: - July 2019: Our All the Music project (ATM) has mathematically exhausted a large melodic dataset - which contains Melody X - October 2020: Adam writes Song 1 - which contains Melody X - November 2020: Beth writes Song 2 - which contains Melody X - but Beth has never heard Adam’s Song 1 - December 2020: Adam sues Beth over Song 2. Beth argues that because Song 1’s Melody X was in the public domain already - when ATM project generated it a year earlier, or as fact existing since the beginning of time - Adam cannot later copyright something (Melody X) that is either factual or has been in the public domain. So far so good ... but what if Adam had written his melody BEFORE July 2019 ? Can he sue both ATM and Beth ?! Could the prosecutor argue that brute computation for a non-profit goal is not infringement, but Beth writing it in a song is ? Or could the defence convince the jury that the melody can't be copyrighted by Adam in the first place because it has existed since the beginning of time, or is one of a relatively small, finite set of possible melodies and so cannot be unique enough to be copyrightable? It is already very encouraging that Katy Perry won a reversal of the infringement verdict for her song Dark Horse on the basis that "A relatively common 8-note combination of unprotected elements that happens to be played in a timbre common to a particular genre of music cannot be so original as to warrant copyright protection".
Fascinating talk, Mr. Riehl! You are effectively showing that a basic melody should not be a basis for a lawsuit. Copyright law in the United States seriously needs reform. I am looking forward to hearing how this holds up in court!
Worse, some channels get all their videos claimed because of some intro music that's misinterpreted as being copyright infringed. And youtube ignores their complaints about the algorithm.
Music cannot truly be owned... As it's all ultimately been cloned... Because every melody and beat... Is most likely a medley of repeat! That makes me wonder... What dimension did Mozart's art, start? Did they beat with an ear? Or hear, with their heart?
Even if you have heard of the song that you are allegedly accused of infringing, stealing can be a good thing! The only way I think it would be bad would be if you stole every single aspect of another song (i.e. its melody AND its lyrics AND its chords AND its instruments) and then claimed it as yours. A musician must be able to have that blank page! Let's get this to 3 million views!!!!!
This mans picture needs to be on every wall of every music classroom, every recording room, every band room, and any room that deals with music on the planet.
Except that any musician worth a damn knows there are only seven notes, not eight. But he's right that it's a problem, only that problem is 12.5% worse than what he says.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 Of course I know that a major/minor scale has seven notes. (My bachelor's degree in music - along with four classes in music theory and many other classes in composition - taught me a thing or two.) But if I had limited my dataset to only seven notes, then it would have eliminated the melodies that end on the high tonic. I used eight notes to increase comprehensiveness.
Then what stops people from just blatantly copying. Again, feeding the biggest artists and making the smaller ones irrelevant. I don’t see the value in this
BakedMoMo Well, Mr. Neely’s video has already gotten 10% of the way there... and the Katy Perry lawsuit is under a retrial and possible appeal, so the “3 million views” argument will likely no longer hold any water.
Well said. In an era of programmatic upheaval - where machines are making previously useful rote "skills" obsolete - the future belongs to those who can use their diverse educational background (Science/Math + Art/Music + Humanities/Law) to solve hard problems using creative, cross-disciplinary methods.
"Every popular melody that ever existed is those 8 notes" Laughs to the tune of the most covered pop song ever, Yesterday, which deviates from the major scale by the 4th note.
Yeah and "8 notes". He forgot the flats/sharps and if he included 2 C-notes, why not 2 D-notes and so on? Since it makes a huge difference if you are using more than just one octave...
Agh God my brain hurts from the idiocy. Computers are only so powerful. Putting a song in a different key is still considered a variant of that song and is thus copyrightable. It's _good enough_ to fall under "all melodies" in the eyes of copyright.
Soo... you've made ALL the music?! Reductionist thinking, it's just math. While I don't deny that there's a need for review of litigation, it's geek mentality to focus on one element of music. Lawsuits and those judges who are presiding need to take any consideration the whole vibe, the energy, the mood of the song.
my guitar neck shows me 12 notes if you include #/b. Some scales have more than 8 notes... so that would change the math to 12 to the power of 12 not including the next octave. Am i wrong here?
This is a much more important problem than Riehl had time to go into, although I'm sure he is aware of it. The 2000 copyright and patents acts have cost Americans billions of dollars because they fused copyright and patents together. This affects the electronics industry and greatly affects medicine. The cost of drugs and even surgical procedures. President Clinton sold off bandwidth that the American people owned, for pennies on the dollar
They have all the melodies of the chromatic scale but not all that could exist. By definition: "A melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm". If they really want all the melodies that could exist there are so much other variables to consider than the 7 main musical notes to care about in the algorithm. What about microtones? What if I use a microtone as the reference note on my tunning? (Like we use A on 440hz). This leds us even more frequencies and tone variables because at the end the 7 main musical notes are just a standar name of certain frequencies. (like A=440hz) If we think more deeply the fact that the commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz and that the chromatic scale only uses 12 specific frequencies for each note if this range we have the remaining frequiencies that could represent the pitch of a note, not a standard one, but by definition (pitch). Quote: "In all technicality, music can be composed of notes at any arbitrary physical frequency." But of course, I get the point of the video and this "notes" are not of common use in music, neither classical, Pop or "commercial music" that is more suceptible of this kind of sues, but saying that they have "all the melodies" without touching this topic is kinda pretentious. (and this is only the pitch part).
Good stuff. I've been a producer for half of my life and I produced this song once. It was an original idea and I was very proud of it. When a friend heard it, he said that it reminded him of another song. When I heard the other song, mine and theirs sounded exactly the same. I'm no big name artist so my song was never released but if it had, I might've been on the hook for millions. I applaud these two men.
Only on the hook for millions if your song had been that profitable, or if you otherwise have a sizable asset base. A lawyer here in Florida explained to me the concept of being "judgement proof." If there isn't enough money in play, a case typically isn't viable.
these guys may have single-handedly saved the whole music industry. Hopefully as the years go on, more of the already copyrighted melodies are released into public domain as well.
Turn your volume up, it's not that difficult. The fact is that most of what you're listening to these days is way too loud. For details search: _loudness wars._ Source: I'm a recording engineer.
As someone who writes music for a hobby, I can't tell you how many times I was working on something I really loved and then realized was subconsciously "stolen" from an already existing popular song. I hate when that happens, it's a huge hit to creative morale lol
I heard him use several sentences that have been used before by other people.
Which ones?
I'm calling my verbal lawyer now, maybe he's used copy right verbal material.
@@ZefParisoto too late, I've filed the lawsuit already.
not only have i copyrighted all sentences, all sentience & all maladies .. i've also copyrighted all spelling mystics too
And not a single word with which I was not familiar. Hmm...
When I was younger I always wondered if there was a limit on how much music humans can create. This is def one of the more interesting TED talks on here
the combination is very big. We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes.
you don't actually need to generate every single melody. just enough to disrupt creative liberty. i admit the number would still be very large, but any disruption by a big player (maybe Amazon) would be catastrophic.
@@chuheihkg "We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes."
So I have some news for you:
If we restrict ourselves to one octave (8 different notes), the exact amount is 429981696. (About 430 million)
If we count every key on a piano as a note (so that's 88 possible notes), the exact amount is 92885869784266333550318482747592186663612968312311404275495006694290687472567021380958888656896.
Or, in English, just under 92 trigintillion.
it is infinite in many ways. just think about the computation about rhythmic values in a melodie, which is the absolute part of a song... this guy is not a composer... just fiddling with computer algoritms.
No, that's bs people with no actual knowledge of music like to say to sound smart. It's the same as with language. When writing prose, can you unwittingly replicate a sentence someone else used, or a whole plot, the protagonist, or maybe the title? Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't write anything original at all. Plus context is key. Same goes for melody. Composers or producers can arrange/orchestrate the same melody in so many different ways that the casual listener wouldn't probably tell it's the same thing. The possibilities are close to infinite.
I'm just commenting this for the sake of this getting recognized by the algorithm.
The copyright of every single melody is in good hands it seems❤️😇
If he releases his melodies on that drive, he will be sued by everyone, even Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement.
They already did release it on their website, along with all the code for the generation algorithm. It's all open source too. Looking at the files right now.
Yes! We're getting Closer and Closer to reaching 300 000!
If we don't work together, we may never reach 3 000 000!
Imagine that Frederic Chopin or Mozart could've hypothetically played the melody from Linkin Park- In the End, or any other contemporary melody when playing piano, just by accident or something. It's entirely possible. Mindblowing.
I'm just making a stab at this, but classical and romantic music is far more complex than a pop song's structure. A Mozart melody might take up, for example, 30 notes. Beethoven's Fifth, everyone can hum the first four notes, followed by the next four notes, but how many notes follow that? Good luck counting lol. But for the record, classical composers often plagiarized themselves (Bach was notorious) and even Rachmaninoff apparently subconsciously rewrote a church piece he'd heard as a child much later in his life... but this to me is more remarkable than anything to be frightened by.
Dude is a legend in music already, thank you and I dont even write music that much.
An author named Spider Robinson wrote a short story, Melancholy Elephants, warning of exactly this problem. It was published in 1982.
Hmmm for some reason the audio on this is pretty low for me, you should turn it up on the video because THIS MAN NEEDS TO BE HEARD!
Seems like copyright law for protecting songwriting is becoming a threat now rather than actually protecting songwriters.
Shouldn't the law read "anyone can use any melody, as long as you do not infringe upon another artists right to make money from their work." I'm not a lawyer, so I can't right this in legal speak... You can argue that a melody is math, and since you can't copyright an equation, you can't copyright a melody!
Leaving this comment for the algo because every musician needs to watch this video
Copyright saves just as many people as it takes down. Copyright laws are so outdated and should really see major changes sooner than later.
That's a gamechanger.
I dont know Adam Neely ... but I watched his video and here I am.
Lets get to 3 Million :)
Musicians needed our very own Elon Musk, this is the closest we ever came, I'm pretty grateful for that
This guy is even cooler than Elon Musk IMHO
don't mind me, i'm just waiting for the day that damien riehl gets copyrighted by all of the beatles melodies that are in that terabyte drive. that will be the most interesting and most expensive thing to come out of this.
Keep on Pushing!
There is no copyright on words like "Hey" "a" "sad" "Jude" "don't" "bad" "take" "song" "make" "it" "better". But if you take that and put it into order there clearly is infringement there.
Same should go for music. Small 4-12 note sections shouldn't be looked at under the microscope, but more in musical context of the whole composition.
Good job guys thank you for your service
That was excellent thank you for your work! Yet; I was wondering considering there are more tonal systems than equal temperament of western music with only 12 distinctive tones. The number of permutations of melodies is also infinite, like a paintings number of brush stokes, if we include any tonal system that is existing or when imagining any derivative. One could make up any custome scale in cents or hertz; making the number of notes infinit..? Of course this is more theoretical and might miss any practical application to the real world!
Keep making music!
Yes, you're absolutely right: We're covering the vast majority of songs that are litigated. The odds of a non-western temperament (e.g., 24-tone) getting sued over is tiny. It'll probably never happen. So we're covering the primary use cases: Major, Minor, 12-tone. Thanks for your note!
Adam Neely brought me here!
Me too! 😁
Me 3 😁
And how do they prove that the composer intentionally copied the melody from another composer? it's impossible to prove. It turns out that the copyright holders have raked in all the music and are taking tribute for it. Then they launch these sounds through the media, loudspeakers, etc., saturating the brain of the newly-born composer...
melodies and notes are like paint it's limited, while words and melodies are like a canvas
it also means someone can own all the songs if they can buy the melodies
More people honestly need to watch this
This is brilliant work. You know… when you copyright a song, there should be a process that determines if it even qualifies considering the current system in place. Otherwise l, what’s the point if this can still happen. Sickening.
How about we finally change the laws?
Intellectual property has been problematic since the very beginning, and with a globalised connected world it's not likely to get any less so unless we fundamentally change the laws and how we perceive the issue.
that's the only correct approach
musicians should lobby the cause with politicians
How to infringe pop lyrics:
use "come back", "don't leave me", "sit on my d", "baby", "you're my everything", "have a good time", "8-string", "drove my van" or a combination of those lines
How about pronouncing "me" as "may?
This comment is going to be taken down for copyright reasons
"tonight is the night"
"walking down the street"
@@MelvynHaas and we only have tonight
Oh S***, thank you for increasing my anxiety of ripping off songs from other artists... this could actually end my career before it’s even begun!
This guy is outstanding. Changing the world with a clever idea.
There’s a finite amount of melodies THAT SELL RECORDS. No one is trying to rip off Sun Ra and nobody owns the right to an Am chord. Hopefully this theory will get tested in the courtroom some day and win before corporations own everything.
Allen Sherman got a copyright on the musical note c Any song that has the note c in it is in violation.
I don't believe anything in nature is copyright or encrypted
Most likely because you've never came up with anything worth keeping
@@ShadowLady1 you are greedy
@@MiyamotoMusakaki World runs on money,hate to break it to you
@@ShadowLady1 greedy sad beings your people truly are, you bring nothing to the world only take, take, take.
@@MiyamotoMusakaki My people? What do you mean by that?
Can’t believe I’m only seeing this now…
I've been working as a songwriter for 30 years in the Latin Market. I have 256 recorded and released songs, of course copyrighted some of them controlled by Warner Chappell, Some Pier Music and others Universal music Publishing. If I understand what he is saying is that he copyrighted all possible note combinations and put them on public domain? Which of course would include my entire 256 recorded songs catalogue along with my thousands of non recorded songs. Well if my songs were registered before he did that, then I don't think he has the right to put them on public domain not with my songs not with anyone else's songs previously registered. Im sorry but You can't put in public domain what you don't own. Besides I don't think this guy is trying to protect or liberate songwriters or composers in fact I think he is trying to take away copyrights from them. The ability to make money with your creation overtime. Next step would be make composers to work for a 1 time buy out work for hire fee and force them to give up their songwriting royalties. Which that is already going on. Media Networks are trying to force composers and songwriters to give up royalties. I wouldn't be surprised if those guys are behind this.
I agree. And as a songwriter I find it both scary and depressing
No such thing as a unique pattern... . They are simply yet to be discovered.
Not anymore with this it's already "discovered"..And waiting for you to infringe upon..smh
what an accomplished human being....
I'm struggling with this right now. I made a song several years ago with plans to use it as the main theme of a video game. I posted it to the internet, and it got a couple hundred views. Now, a new game coming out this year, the sequel to a very popular franchise, is using the same exact melody. So, I am almost positive that they never heard my song before. What I'm scared of is getting myself sued for using the same melody in a game.
You don't have to worry about that. Because if you wrote before hearing it from the other game. You already have the proof in your computer. When you first record it or program it. Your computer marks the dat as you probably already know. Therefore you have the date. If the date is prior for their creation they don't have anything on you. Cased close. Won't go any further.
DREAMCRASH
I agree with the above commenter. You’ve published your melody online, and that comes with post date. It’s yours.
If you are in the United States, you already have established copyright for the song. It is the newcomer that is infringing on your rights. They would lose any action in court against you if it went that far. You may wish to consider preserving the evidence of your own work, submit it for a copyright registration (currently about a $55 fee), and start crowdfunding for the legal fees to cover the lawsuit you will be starting.
@@misterlyle. Thanks for the advice. Although, in this particular situation I couldn't bring myself to sue, as my own project gets closer to fruition I will have to prepare for a proper response in case I am sent a cease-and-desist. I don't really know enough about how these things actually play out to know exactly what I need, but I will be able to get in touch with a lawyer for advice if it comes to that.
@@isweartofuckinggod You will probably only become a target if your project is hugely successful; so good luck going forward!
If we just find a way to perform to all those melodies in a video, we could listen to it while we're sleeping, driving, etc. Then if we ever get sued, we could say "I actually heard that melody first when it was in public domain" and the entire problem would go away.
wouldn't the same argument apply to patent law? A patent for the light bulb is a finite list of diagrams, descriptions etc
Let's make it 3 million views
Let' s get this to 3 mil!!!!!
10:54 - No, that won't happen. Even if they keep just 12 notes, and only 88 keys/notes on a standard piano, that would create over 216 _sextillion_ melodies which at even just a single byte per melody would take up over 186 _zettabytes_ which you definitely could not store on a hard-drive to make it count as automatically copyrighted, forget about 100 notes. The most you could do would be to write down a _description_ of the melodies instead of the melodies themselves, which doesn't count.
While there are 88 keys on some keyboards, those are not all separate notes.
It doesn't matter if you play a song in B flat or A minor, the notes are the same for a melody. There are only 12 actually notes weather you have a keyboard with 12 keys or 1200.
@@TheNewsDepot That's exactly right. And that's why we chose those parameters. A cover song in a different key is still a copy.
Also the octave does not matter. A melody doesn't change because I shifted up/down an octave or so. That limits the song space by a lot. The real number eater is when you have long melodies. But a melody is rarely more than 1 dozen or so notes long and even at twice that length, it can be set to copyrightable form. You may not be able to cover them all, but you can cover most of the useful ones.
Yes, @@jppagetoois right. And a way to make even longer melodies: Connect Melody1 with Melody2. So a "long melody" is just two shorter melodies.
This is from early 2020. I wonder if this has had an impact on any cases since. Very interesting
why is the audio on TED talks always so low
This video should have at least 3 million views.
Adam Neely sent me on a mission.
69th like!
Same, brother!
PREACH!
I've come to do my part
Same here!
Lets take this video to 3 million views. So that everyone has 'ACCESS'
This videofile is, in a essence, a sequence of 0 and 1. I saw them already, so…
Ted talk has over 3 mil subscribers. and youtube has over 3 mil users, everyone already has access
@@MoGratitude U didn't get my point. Watch Adam Neely's video on this topic. 'Access' in this case is a legal term
@@Bhatakti_Hawas yes, im broadening the application of "access" does access to something easily accessible excuse knowing about it? rhetorical question
Feed the algorithm!
Aight.. lets bump this to 3 million bros!!
onesyphorus Ὀνησίφορος yeeeeeeet
For the algorithm!
bros -.-
*Microtonality walks away quietly, hoping not to be seen*
If you can show me one instance of microtonality-usage in a mainstream pop-setting I will absolutely acquire and digest a hat
@@sweetwheatsy king gizzard and the lizard wizard
@@sweetwheatsy Marty Friedman?
@@AUBCodeII Oooh, who's that and what fitting track can you recommend?
@@sweetwheatsy
The West doesn't know about the existence of Microtones
These guys are musical HEROES.. they've created ACTUAL and FACTUAL melodies that are TANGIBLE and EXIST and copyrighted them as public domain to save the music.. This is what makes them heroes in my book.
Lol...
Nor Actual or Factual, no copyright infridgments have been legally done in a court using this pseudo-copyright exercise.
EVERYTHING IS A REMIX.
OK BOOMER ok boomer
@@ZaneDalton ok dalton
the court would like to know: did you or did you not have access to your parent's genetic material when you created your own?
all of life is copyright infringement. when the prokaryotes lawyer up we are all screwed.
In Western music theory there are 12 different notes in an infinite amount of octaves. An octave = the distance between a given frequency and double or half of that = 440hz is the same note as 220 hz just in different octaves. Outside the Western world cultures have divided the octave space into up to more than 50! different notes - and not only the 12 we have in the west. Riehl is wrong in stating that there only are 8 different notes plus wrong in many other statements. And in a bar there are way over 64 different places to place your note if you count in 64th and triplets, sixtuplets and so on. I bet he only used 16. I get his point, but he understands very little about music theory despite his claim of credentials. That makes his algorithm embarrasingly flawed. And to repeat myself: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do is SEVEN different notes since Do is mentioned twice - like CDEFGABC. Even kids know that. He should have said "most popular melodies in the west are written using the Ionian or Aolian scales which both contains only seven notes. There are in total 12 different notes and therefore only 12 keys".
Music really shouldn't have a copywrite on it. Unless someone blatanly copies a song, changing it a bunch to make something that sounds similar but not the same is how everything else in the world works anyways. Buildings are constructed from the same design patterns and science is done with the same formulas.
THANK YOU
Right, but how would you prove those cases where someone DOES blatantly copy a song? They're going to deny it and use the same excuses a legitimate songwriter does.
@@swagar If you but forgo this misheld belief that capitalism is the only structure that the world can take, this problem becomes no problem. Provided of course one's sense of self worth is not founded on the opinions of others.
@@swagar I'd say give them a 5 year copyright hold on a song, then after that, the money they make comes from concerts and merch. In the cases of big labels ripping melodies off smaller ones, the songs usually sound way differently anyways (like the katy perry darkhorse one). After 5 years the song already had made 90% of its money and is considered old anyways.
These dudes attempt to initially copyright this, so they can put all this melodies as public domain. Actually it is a great card to play for all out there.
Anyone else come from Adam Neely’s vídeo?
Even silence was copyrighted by John Cage🥴
Hello, darkness
Hey! It sentence was copyrighted by my!
@@vadym1316 Я плохо говорю по русски. Вы хотите помочь друг другу?
@@letsnotgothere6242 i'm speak english badly too
bc it was written as sheet music, the piece is copyrighted. however, i can copyright the same thing by laying out all half rests instead of measure rests, put in a different time signature and key
Right-click -> stats for nerds -> content loudness: -24 dB :(
Had to turn this video waaaaay up to hear it, and even then, it's really quiet.
Regardless, thanks for fighting back against a broken copyright system. It's important work and a good workaround until we can get more meaningful reform. I just was surprised to see such a quiet video on youtube. It is, by far, the quietest one I've ever encountered since I started checking the stats widget a couple years ago. Previously, the quietest one was -15 dB.
Thank you for this service. The idea that George Harrison pulled back on writing music is a catastrophe to art. The ingenuity of this project is really helpful for establishing all art is prior art, especially in our songs.
Unfortunately, people are now suing over chord progressions and if a song just SOUNDS stylistically similar.
chord progressions and rhythms cant be sued over. only melody.
@@christopermitchell5019 That HAS been the conventional wisdom, however, recently, it has started happening & people have WON! Rick Beato has some good videos on this subject referencing some recent cases. Look up the Katy Perry case as one example.
@@Milewskige The Katy Perry one was a melody
@@burningflower1 Watch the Rick Beato video
He should upload recordings of all the music to TH-cam, see if he gets hit by any of the big companies, then sue them when they try to take away his rights.
Wouldnt it be the same thing, but the other way around. Those big companies actually do have the copyright to the song, so the randomly generated melody has already been copyrighted.
well supposing the a. I. could know the copyrighted songs, you could upload only the public ones
@@dubliostower Actually they can prove that they neither used other songs to write it NOR wrote subconsciously xD
@@dubliostower That's a can of worms a record label won't open: If they sue Damien for copyright infringement, win or lose, Damien can now sue them for every single song they'll ever release - and use the record label's own testimony against them.
++
As a musician, a song writer, a sound engineer, a producer, and a recording studio owner who also has had a record label in the past, I think this is a talk that needs to be had. Money grabbing litigation is the worst thing this world has created and it has impacted the creativity and freedom of the arts. This reduces the quality of the art we can enjoy and stifles creativity, without even considering the way it can cause the creative well to dry up. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and everything we take in is an influence, there is bound to be a sign of that in any work you create in the future, and that is not a bad thing necessarily. And even if someone does copy your song, are you just passed that theirs is superior? Go out and redo it then and make it even better and use their improved version as the stepping stone to take it rob the next level, or are you not capable of doing that?
Yes, well said. All art iterates upon the past. Originality is less important than authenticity. If copyright is (arguably) meant to encourage art proliferation, then the copyright laws should align with that goal.
Shoulders of Giants originates from when Newton stole all Robert Hooke's work and took the credit- he used it as a slight since Hooke was a hunchback due to, ya know, actually using a microscope
That's all well and good until you find out some millionaire took your stuff and made a lot of money without credit/royalties to you. Of course, they will never admit to it. Then when you try to take their stuff, they copyright claim your azz!
@Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 It's Creators Life + 95 years or so.
Dope
Can anybody turn that vid louder? XD
That's super easy to do. In mpv just hit 0 to turn up volume (make sure you have volume-max=200 in your ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf file first). This of course assumes that you also have youtube-dl installed and are viewing this video in mpv via youtube-dl script.
@@KutAnimus so the answer is "no"
Qt Animu 🤣
@@sudokuzcalkami In what sense? I provided steps to achieve the intended result.
Qt Animu I think it’s reasonable to assume that very few people aren’t just using their browser/mobile app
Pure genius. On their website in the FAQ they illustrate how it might protect someone from a lawsuit:
- July 2019: Our All the Music project (ATM) has mathematically exhausted a large melodic dataset - which contains Melody X
- October 2020: Adam writes Song 1 - which contains Melody X
- November 2020: Beth writes Song 2 - which contains Melody X - but Beth has never heard Adam’s Song 1
- December 2020: Adam sues Beth over Song 2. Beth argues that because Song 1’s Melody X was in the public domain already - when ATM project generated it a year earlier, or as fact existing since the beginning of time - Adam cannot later copyright something (Melody X) that is either factual or has been in the public domain.
So far so good ... but what if Adam had written his melody BEFORE July 2019 ? Can he sue both ATM and Beth ?!
Could the prosecutor argue that brute computation for a non-profit goal is not infringement, but Beth writing it in a song is ?
Or could the defence convince the jury that the melody can't be copyrighted by Adam in the first place because it has existed since the beginning of time, or is one of a relatively small, finite set of possible melodies and so cannot be unique enough to be copyrightable?
It is already very encouraging that Katy Perry won a reversal of the infringement verdict for her song Dark Horse on the basis that "A relatively common 8-note combination of unprotected elements that happens to be played in a timbre common to a particular genre of music cannot be so original as to warrant copyright protection".
This is literaly one of my greatest fears when producing, like how am I supposed to know every melody that was ever written and then avoid them WTF
hey algorithm! look at this! I made a comment!
One day, TH-cam's algorithm will pick this up again. I've done my part, and will be waiting.
Simply brilliant. Thank you. The "Copyright lawsuits" were already going nutts.
Cool. Hope your message gets out -- this sort of law needs reform badly. The current state is untenable.
Fascinating talk, Mr. Riehl! You are effectively showing that a basic melody should not be a basis for a lawsuit. Copyright law in the United States seriously needs reform. I am looking forward to hearing how this holds up in court!
Maybe melodies and chords should be removed from copyright law and moved into the category of fair use.
what they try to do is circumvent the legislation but your suggestion is how it's really supposed to be done, that is by the legislators themselves
The hero musicians have been waiting for....tired of reading copyright lawsuits.
For ages I've wished someone smart enough would come up with something like this. And I found this by complete accident
Same!
Okay, I just got to the bit where he says they've expanded to 12 notes (the full chromatic scale) good. Otherwise it's all a waste of time.
Every TH-camr that has anything to do with music should be talking about this
Worse, some channels get all their videos claimed because of some intro music that's misinterpreted as being copyright infringed. And youtube ignores their complaints about the algorithm.
yeah for sure
This is the best TED ever... Hands down.
Music cannot truly be owned...
As it's all ultimately been cloned...
Because every melody and beat...
Is most likely a medley of repeat!
That makes me wonder...
What dimension did Mozart's art, start?
Did they beat with an ear? Or hear, with their heart?
Greg Stewart the fact that you took the time to right this is commendable, good stuff mate👌🏼
Even if you have heard of the song that you are allegedly accused of infringing, stealing can be a good thing! The only way I think it would be bad would be if you stole every single aspect of another song (i.e. its melody AND its lyrics AND its chords AND its instruments) and then claimed it as yours. A musician must be able to have that blank page!
Let's get this to 3 million views!!!!!
This mans picture needs to be on every wall of every music classroom, every recording room, every band room, and any room that deals with music on the planet.
Except that any musician worth a damn knows there are only seven notes, not eight. But he's right that it's a problem, only that problem is 12.5% worse than what he says.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 Of course I know that a major/minor scale has seven notes. (My bachelor's degree in music - along with four classes in music theory and many other classes in composition - taught me a thing or two.) But if I had limited my dataset to only seven notes, then it would have eliminated the melodies that end on the high tonic. I used eight notes to increase comprehensiveness.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 rekt, lul.
Then what stops people from just blatantly copying. Again, feeding the biggest artists and making the smaller ones irrelevant. I don’t see the value in this
And what about the melodies/songs already copyrighted ?
this guy can jump to the smaller artist's defense... did you even watch the god damn video?
For big-name musicians it actually doesn't matter. They are all corporate marketing machinery creations anyway.
You have exposed the failings of copyrighted music. Thank you.
now if this and adam neely's video reaches 3m views...what now, copyright laws?
->adam neely's vid took me here
BakedMoMo Well, Mr. Neely’s video has already gotten 10% of the way there... and the Katy Perry lawsuit is under a retrial and possible appeal, so the “3 million views” argument will likely no longer hold any water.
Science (Math) + Art (Music) + Humanities (Law) = The key to beauty and justice. Raise your kids loving the said branches.
Well said. In an era of programmatic upheaval - where machines are making previously useful rote "skills" obsolete - the future belongs to those who can use their diverse educational background (Science/Math + Art/Music + Humanities/Law) to solve hard problems using creative, cross-disciplinary methods.
When you brute force music to create the Final Fantasy 7 Battle Theme
Copyright laws need a rework, thats for sure
absolutely
Law won't cut it. Society is insane. Work needs to be done on that level.
"Every popular melody that ever existed is those 8 notes"
Laughs to the tune of the most covered pop song ever, Yesterday, which deviates from the major scale by the 4th note.
Isn't it just in E Major but it modulates to the relative minor? Are you implying that it's in lydian?
@@infinitefretboard It's in F major but makes use of the relative D melodic minor scale
I think this guy don't really understand music... and what about Rhythm ? Rhythm is really important in a melody.
kermheat BAM! It’s over , you got him. Done
Yeah and "8 notes". He forgot the flats/sharps and if he included 2 C-notes, why not 2 D-notes and so on? Since it makes a huge difference if you are using more than just one octave...
Agh God my brain hurts from the idiocy.
Computers are only so powerful.
Putting a song in a different key is still considered a variant of that song and is thus copyrightable.
It's _good enough_ to fall under "all melodies" in the eyes of copyright.
AllTheMusic dot info
Soo... you've made ALL the music?! Reductionist thinking, it's just math. While I don't deny that there's a need for review of litigation, it's geek mentality to focus on one element of music. Lawsuits and those judges who are presiding need to take any consideration the whole vibe, the energy, the mood of the song.
my guitar neck shows me 12 notes if you include #/b. Some scales have more than 8 notes... so that would change the math to 12 to the power of 12 not including the next octave. Am i wrong here?
You create music after you hear music. And the memory before wont disappear, it will emerge in your music.
This is a much more important problem than Riehl had time to go into, although I'm sure he is aware of it. The 2000 copyright and patents acts have cost Americans billions of dollars because they fused copyright and patents together. This affects the electronics industry and greatly affects medicine. The cost of drugs and even surgical procedures. President Clinton sold off bandwidth that the American people owned, for pennies on the dollar
You stated "Accidental"; I think you meant "Coincidental".
Innocent until proven guilty! Why is the 3 million view "probably heard it" enough to convict?!
They have all the melodies of the chromatic scale but not all that could exist.
By definition:
"A melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm".
If they really want all the melodies that could exist there are so much other variables to consider than the 7 main musical notes to care about in the algorithm.
What about microtones?
What if I use a microtone as the reference note on my tunning? (Like we use A on 440hz).
This leds us even more frequencies and tone variables because at the end the 7 main musical notes are just a standar name of certain frequencies.
(like A=440hz)
If we think more deeply the fact that the commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz and that the chromatic scale only uses 12 specific frequencies for each note if this range
we have the remaining frequiencies that could represent the pitch of a note, not a standard one, but by definition (pitch).
Quote:
"In all technicality, music can be composed of notes at any arbitrary physical frequency."
But of course, I get the point of the video and this "notes" are not of common use in music, neither classical, Pop or "commercial music" that is more suceptible of this kind of sues, but saying that they have "all the melodies" without touching this topic is kinda pretentious.
(and this is only the pitch part).
Good stuff. I've been a producer for half of my life and I produced this song once. It was an original idea and I was very proud of it. When a friend heard it, he said that it reminded him of another song. When I heard the other song, mine and theirs sounded exactly the same. I'm no big name artist so my song was never released but if it had, I might've been on the hook for millions. I applaud these two men.
Only on the hook for millions if your song had been that profitable, or if you otherwise have a sizable asset base. A lawyer here in Florida explained to me the concept of being "judgement proof." If there isn't enough money in play, a case typically isn't viable.
Damn! So cool to see a good guy out there fighting the good fight! Thank you, Damien, musicians need you!
THINK AGAIN ..this is a TROJAN HORSE.
this. i don't trust these fast talking lawyer types selling some "solution" that actually fucks you over@@Cloud9MediaTv
Spread this video far and wide everyone!
these guys may have single-handedly saved the whole music industry. Hopefully as the years go on, more of the already copyrighted melodies are released into public domain as well.
Too quiet
Turn your volume up, it's not that difficult. The fact is that most of what you're listening to these days is way too loud. For details search: _loudness wars._
Source: I'm a recording engineer.
@@aylbdrmadison1051, you may be right, but I increased the volume to the maximum and still barely heard this man
@@MaxGamesShow maybe your headphones are dead than or the resistance is to high for your mobile
@@bergglobus2428, I appreciate your point of view, but comparingly to the other YT videos, it is indeed quiet, trust me
@@MaxGamesShow idk what to tell you, but that problem is purely on your device. It is factually quiet, for you, but not everyone else
As someone who writes music for a hobby, I can't tell you how many times I was working on something I really loved and then realized was subconsciously "stolen" from an already existing popular song. I hate when that happens, it's a huge hit to creative morale lol