Chord Progressions, Backing Tracks / Karaoke Tracks + Copyright Question.

KatyAdelson

I Love YTtalk
Staff member
Hello!

I've tried to find out some stuff on my own but ended up reading in circles and found conflicting arguments. I thought I'd ask here to see what people think.

Many people who are familiar with music are aware that most pop songs use the same 1 - 4 - 5 chord progressions, and when transcribed to the same key signature, sound nearly identical. The same is true for most music genres (including fiddle tunes...lol!).

My question is which "parts of music" are copyrighted? I realize that the melody, original backing track, sheet music, lyrics, harmonies, and final mixed music track are all copyrighted, but where do karaoke tracks/chord progressions, and rhythms fit in with music copyrights?

If someone were to make a karaoke track that fits perfectly with multiple pop songs as well as perhaps an original song, can the karaoke track be distributed under the creative commons without any worries? This assumes that the karaoke track has no lyrics, or melody and only follows a chord progression that happens to also fit with copyrighted songs.

I'd assume that it would only become a problem if the track were associated with a copyrighted song in some way, but I'm curious what you guys think, and/or if you have any resources I could read.

Thank you!
Katy
 
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