Tools
Tools
Negus, Keith, Street, John 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9650-063X and Behr, Adam
(2017)
Copying, copyright and originality: Imitation, transformation and popular musicians.
European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20 (4).
pp. 363-380.
ISSN 1367-5494
Preview |
PDF (Accepted manuscript)
- Accepted Version
Download (216kB) | Preview |
Abstract
With copyright becoming ever more important for business and government, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the practices and values associated with copying in popular music culture and advocates a more critical approach to notions of originality. Drawing from interviews with working musicians this article challenges the approaches to copying and popular music that pitch corporate notions of piracy against creative sharing by citizens. It explores differing approaches to the circulation of recordings and identifies three distinct types of creative copying: i) learning through imitation, ii) copying as transformation, iii) copying for commercial opportunity. The article then considers how copying is caught between a commercial necessity for familiar musical products that must conform to existing expectations and a copyright legislative rationale requiring original sounds with individual owners. The article highlights how legacies from a long history of human copying as a means of acquiring knowledge and skills leads to a collision of creative musical practices, commercial imperatives and copyright regulation and results in a series of unavoidable tensions around originality and copying that are a central characteristic of cultural production.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | copying,copyright,musicians,originality,recording industry |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Cultural Politics, Communications & Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Policy & Politics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | Pure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Feb 2017 02:22 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2023 09:44 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/62604 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1367549417718206 |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |