2025 Trends in Music and Copyright

Music, named after the Muses, the Greek goddesses who inspired the arts, is one of the oldest forms of human communication. It is constantly evolving. Today, in lockstep with leaps in the technological spheres, music is becoming more accessible to audiences who can both enjoy their favorite genres passively and become active participants in shaping, creating, and modifying it through virtual user interfaces.*

Today’s musical composers have at their disposal a wide array of musical applications. Engraving, the committing of notes and rhythms into a visually transmittable format (i.e. sheet music), has been aided by professional-grade software like Sibelius and Finale and is becoming reachable by more mainstream users through easy-to-use applications and websites like Noteflight, Flat.io, Trinket, and others.

Sheet music traditionally had been published by firms and companies that specialized in the publication of music. Simrock, for example, engraved and published the works of Brahms and Dvorak; composers like these drafted their compositions on handwritten musical documents called manuscripts. They often autographed the final version of their manuscript. Many of these autograph manuscripts exist for reference today in libraries throughout Europe and the Americas.

“Borrowing” ideas from other composers was commonplace in classical music prior to the middle of the 20th century. Rachmaninoff, for example, took a famous melody by Paganini and created a symphonic work for piano with orchestra. So too was pretending someone else was the composer. Kreisler, for example, attributed his own compositions to earlier composers, like Pugnani, regularly. The legal disputes of pre-20th century musical property were of a different nature and were often concentrated among a limited sphere of well-trained musicians and academics.

By contrast, today’s technology and social media have dramatically increased the risk of copyright infringement as well as the profits available from successfully reattributing great musical ideas. As well, public education has made musical training a common part of the K-12 education. People are no longer passive audiences of select and elite classical musicians; they are more involved in music, able now to replicate, modify, disseminate, and monetize music.

One of the latest of the cases confronting infringement through social media is Eminem’s lawsuit against Meta for Instagram’s user tools which allow users to incorporate copyrighted musical materials in their own videos. Eight Mile Style, LLC et al v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al, 2:25-cv-11618 (E.D. Mich. 2025). This case deals with the challenges created by popular social media sites like Instagram, allowing users to use music, the #trendingsounds, to get more views.

Other high-profile cases challenge the status quo of accessibility of musical ideas as well. Dua Lipa recently defended a challenge of infringement, which turned on 23 notes in six different pitches descending a scale. Larball Publ’g Co., Inc. v. Lipa, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56768 (S.D. N.Y. 2025). In this case, the court contended with three music theory experts, each of which provided a thorough analysis on the 2.25 measures (subdivisions) and approximately 4 seconds of music at issue.

The nature of each of these cases shows the direction legal disputes in 21st century music and copyright will be heading – smaller musical ideas will be garnering larger interests in protection and control over its distribution. This raises several questions courts will need to wrestle with:

What size, and which iterations, of a “musical idea” is protectable?

Courts have dealt with music copyright disputes stemming from as few as seven or eight notes. One recent case evaluated whether an ostinato with only eight notes could be protected under an advanced array of music-theory concepts pairs with a subjective assessment of the factfinder. Gray v. Perry, 2020 U.S. Dist. Lexis 46313 (C.D. Cal. 2020). In this case, pop artist Katy Perry’s use of the eight-note ostinato in the song “Dark Horse” was found not to be an infringement of “Joyful Noise” by Flame. Another older case found seven notes protectable. Swirsky v. Carey, 376 F.3d 841 (9th Cir. 2004).

As applications offer users a chance to transform (in the musical sense, not the legal sense) musical ideas, courts will be faced with disputes about the extent to which a musical work has undergone modification. Musical composers may employ such techniques as:

• Arrangement – rewriting an existing composition for a different instrument or group of instruments

• Simplifications – taking a piece that is complex and making it easier; often a major function of websites that take popular music and make it playable for amateur musicians

• Modal changes – taking a melody that is major and making it minor (or something other)

• Transposition – keeping the melody the same but starting it in a different key

• Augmentation / diminution of rhythm or intervals - stretching or shrinking the durations proportionally or expanding or shrinking the space between pitches

• Inversions – turning the melody or music upside down according to its intervals

• Retrogrades – the melody or music is reversed so that it is backwards

• Reharmonizations – keeping a melody but making the harmonies that accompany it different

How will artificial intelligence impact the creation of protectable “musical ideas”?

Traditionally, the distinction between the creations of humans and the creations of anything else had been clearer than it is currently. Human origin was ordinarily a prerequisite for finding protection in a musical work, as opposed to bird songs. See 12 Nimmer on Copyright 802, 802.5(C) (2025). It may still be a prerequisite today, yet the battle is fought over what, precisely, constitutes "human origin": artificial intelligence ("AI") is assimilating many of the skills musical composers honed over many years, like orchestration, which is the technique of allocating different sounds, melodies, and harmonies in balanced ways to different instruments.

Ongoing litigation, such as In re OpenAI, Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103349 (S.D. N.Y.), may help clarify AI’s role in and effect on digital copyright relating to written material, but the question will persist in music as it relates to issues such as sampling (i.e., taking a portion of an existing music composition and integrating it into a new work) and generating new musical ideas. Artificial intelligence music software will certainly find its way into a courtroom in coming years; there will likely be increasing need to rely on not just musical experts but experts who have music composition backgrounds, fundamental legal training, and aptitude with AI-powered music applications.

The challenges of music theory and the accessibility of music applications for amateurs will also surface in other areas of law, including licensing, royalties, and consumer protection.

Licensing and royalties

Several online music websites house massive databases of sheet music. The Petrucci Music Library, IMSLP.org, is a favorite of classical music undergraduate and graduate students. This website provides free unlimited downloads of sheet music that has progressed into public domain status, a period which varies from country to country. The website is generally accessible internationally.

Other websites, like MuseScore, musescore.com, allow both professionals and amateurs to publish and to purchase content, arrangements, and original compositions. Part of the process often requires users to grant a license. Individual users and companies, like publishers, can grant these licenses.

Some users may want simply to disseminate their compositions to the world, free of charge. This type of desire poses its own set of challenges that are sometimes solved by Creative Commons types of licenses.

Consumer protection and education

As users of all ages interact with their mobile devices in both structured and informal settings (at school or at home), they will no doubt be enticed to download enjoyable music applications that function throughout the gambit of music including basic composition and creative platforms, virtual instrument or theory lessons, and assistive piano tuning software. Consumer protection interests will be deployed to aid in such issues as unwanted subscriptions and agreements, minimum age requirements for app interactions, and data privacy of user content.

It will be increasingly important to emphasize that consumers, whether professional, amateur, or student, be educated about the subscriptions they might purchase, the privacy and sharing policies, and the choices they may have between applications.

Equally important is to make education about copyright, infringement, and protections available to consumers, starting with children in K-12 settings. All users of music software, and musicians generally, should have fundamental knowledge about what protections are afforded their musical creations and what actions might infringe on the rights of others and their musical creations.

As the musical landscape evolves, prompted by developments in technology and the law, courts, musicians, and content creators must grapple with the fine line between inspiration and infringement. Amid the legal complexities, it is worth remembering that music is fundamentally a participatory and human art best understood not just in courtrooms, but by simply making music. Truly, it’s never too late to learn the piano.

*This is not legal advice, nor is it an attempt to influence legislation. This blog is personal opinion only. For specific questions on copyright of specific compositions, whether yours or someone else's, please consult a practicing attorney in your area.