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Covered Music Ethical Issues

Decent Essays

Covering has become an important part of today’s musical world. A practice that started many decades ago, dating back to the 1940s and beyond, has become not only accepted but expected. It is a complex issue; however, as it raises issues such as the acknowledgment of the covered music as original art, the ethical questions the practice raises, and the relevance of the cover to popular music. Artists have covered songs for many years, and the practice has expanded drastically. Some artists cover songs performed by an artist covering other songs. Other musicians merely sample parts of a song, using that sample to create their own work. Recently, rap musicians have even begun producing many remixes that continue to raise ethical questions. The practice of covering is essential to today’s music despite the moral and legal issues it creates. Today’s version of covering is …show more content…

Vanilla Ice faced problems when he didn’t pay David Bowie and Queen credit or royalties when he sampled their music for “Ice, Ice Baby.” Had he done this, his use of their base line would have been perfectly acceptable. An example of an artist who samples properly is Kanye West. In his song “Stronger,” Kanye sampled a line from a Daft Punk song. Mr. West took all the proper steps to credit Daft Punk which allowed him to create an extremely popular song. If Danger Mouse properly credited both the Beatles and Jay-Z in the creation of his Grey Album, there would have been no concerns and EMI would not have halted its distribution. Lil Wayne is an artist who creates a lot of remixes, and in doing so he raises his own popularity and profits substantially. However he gives complete credit to the original artist and makes sure there are no ethical concerns with his work. As long as an artist fulfills the proper legal requirements, paying royalties and giving songwriting credit, then there is no ethical issue with

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