Whats a forensic musicologist?
More often, forensic musicologists are called upon to determine whether a particular song qualifies as copyright infringement. When a hip-hop artist samples a song without permission, for example, the plaintiff will usually bring in an expert to show how similar the sample is to the original. Sometimes the similarities are obvious to the listener. Other times the expert might perform a “wave form analysis”—which turns the samples into visual display—to prove that the tracks are identical. This is especially helpful if the original track is somehow distorted or obscured in the new song. (Some music producers will add sounds to deliberately mask the original sample.) In 2004, an appeals court ruled that artists have to pay for every sample of music they borrow, no matter how small or unrecognizable. The song that sparked the lawsuit, N.W.A.’s “100 Miles and Runnin’,” borrowed a three-note riff from a Funkadelic song, which had been lowered in pitch and looped.
