How ‘Stems’ Are Changing Music Creation

AI image, my own prompt; text screenshot from the website of Soundraw music software. All music lovers who perform others’ work are constantly walking a line between plagiarism (stealing music from other artists without acknowledgement) and appropriate use (eg singing in choirs, or building on others’ musical compositions and ‘ideas’). This line has become murkier as digital technology, and now AI, allows users (and plagiarists) to effortlessly cut and paste from one work into another. This takes a number of forms beyond obvious outright plagiarism: Unintentional plagiarism — where a significant portion of music under copyright appears in a subsequent work, unacknowledged and uncompensated (most famously George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord unintentional plagiarizing from Ronnie Mack’s Chiffons’ hit He’s So Fine). Covers — where some or all of a published work is ‘affectionately’ performed by an appreciative band, with or without acknowledgement or compensation; historically these have…