The Role Of Stealing In The Music Industry

Have you ever listened to a song on the radio today and thought “hmm that sounds eerily similar to [insert another song here]?” Probably not, however, Sampling music is more common then one would think, in fact it’s become a huge portion of the music industry (Kravis). However, sampling as well as songs unintentionally sounding like other songs can cause problems within the music industry. Time and time again artists are accused of “stealing” some of their biggest hits. There is a huge debate over what constitutes “fair use” and what constitutes stealing or plagiarizing a catchy tune. (Kravis). However, not many cases of such practices get much media coverage, except perhaps Robin Thicke and Pharell William’s battle with the children of Marvin
Gaye over their song “Blurred Lines” ( insert source once found ) or Sam Smith’s completely unintentional use of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” in his song “Stay with Me” which resulted in Smith paying royalties to Tom Petty and Songwriter Jeff Lynne (Locker). Weather intentional or unintentional, the debate over plagiarism vs. fair use is actually hurting the music industry as a whole.