Spotify Playlist on “Intellectual Property”
[Sometimes blog posts get stuck in draft mode for various reasons. I wrote the draft of this post in 2018…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]
[Back in 2018,] I put together a Spotify playlist about intellectual property. I keyword-searched for copyright, trademark, patents, publicity rights, trade secrets, intellectual property, and many others. I took a broad view of when the lyrics seemed to relate to IP in some manner, but I excluded songs where at most the phrase appeared in the lyrics but had no other connection. I excluded instrumentals (especially house/techno). I also excluded all foreign-language songs and most songs that were impossible to understand and the lyrics weren’t online, even if the title was a direct hit. I tried not to make any artistic judgments about the songs, but some were so truly awful that I never, ever wanted to hear them again. I’m sure I’m missing relevant songs–please help me by sending your suggestions.
The playlist itself covers a wide range of musical genres. You won’t be familiar with most of these songs. This mix contains some serious long-tail stuff. Relatedly, most of the songs aren’t great. (And please try to empathize about the dreck I suffered through to find the relevant songs). Also, a number of songs contain inappropriate words, including profanity and racial/sexist slurs. I didn’t screen out songs on that basis. Caveat listener.
One interesting phenomenon I discovered: songs that used “copyright” as an euphemism for control in a romantic context, including “I’m Going to Copyright Your Kisses,” “Copyright on Your Love,” “Copyright to Her Heart,” and “Copyright on Love.”
A special shoutout to “Title 17 in Song: Section 101 Definitions,” which literally uses the statutory text as lyrics and then adds accompanying music. You have to hear it to believe it. Some of my favorite songs include “Berne Convention,” “Children,” “Computer Program” (complete with auto-tuning), “Display,” “Including/Such As,” and “Work Made for Hire.” You MUST listen to it!