 So today I was scrolling through the endless waterfall of updates on our descent into hell that we call Twitter and news came across my timeline that Olivia Rodrigo gave retroactive writing credit on her hit song Good For You to Paramore meaning that Paramore will now get royalties on this song as well as writing credit. This comes after Olivia has been accused of theft by listeners from Taylor Swift and Elvis Costello and to make it all more messy she's also been accused by Courtney Love who's accused her of ripping off her iconic album cover. And for those of you who've seen the viral TikTok that mashed up Good For You and Paramore's misery business you may be thinking we've achieved justice and the world is now a more rightful place now that Paramore has been given royalties for this song. But I'm here to tell you this is quite the opposite and this is a trend in music that will ruin music and that the mobs of people accusing Olivia and other artists of ripping off songs is not getting justice it's unjust. So in this video I'm going to explain why Olivia Rodrigo giving retroactive credit to Taylor Swift and Paramore is a trend in music that will make music much worse for every artist. Hi I'm Jesse Cannon a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from zero to ten thousand fans and this is Muse Formation. So obviously I just came in pretty hot but there's good reason for a quick background I spent two decades as a record producer with countless top artists and have credits on well over a thousand records so I have a lot of experience creating music and what goes into artist creativity and how to nurture it. So let's go over what's been happening. Olivia Rodrigo has come out with what will seemingly be deemed the album of the year in pop circles after being someone who is on virtually no one's radar before January of this year that is unless you watch Disney TV shows. The record has had three massive pop chart hits but more importantly it seems to be that rare pop record that really emotionally affects the listeners of it like no one has done since well three years ago when Billie Eilish did it I guess. But in the less than 150ish days since Olivia's debut sour began to be rolled out I've never seen an artist attack the way she has for the derivative nature of her music. The second she dropped the single deja vu accusations flooded the internet that since Livy did a vocal pattern that kind of sounded like Taylor Swift's cruel summer Taylor must get justice since you know justice is paying one of the richest musicians in the history of music for a vocal style she borrowed from someone else right. Next she dropped the song Good for You. It was obvious it took a lot of cues from early 2000s pop punk when I heard the song I just thought cool formula brand new in the verse taking back Sunday in the chorus and admire that she had taken influences from these groups as literally thousands of other bands did but I thought it was really cool to recontextualize those artists in a teenage pop context but apparently I was wrong as a mash-up of Paramore's misery business and Olivia's good for you spread like wildfire across the net which of course led the mob to demand justice and yes I am definitely not going to call this a woke mob because the woke mob is actually enlightened whereas this comes from an absolute ignorance of how music works but this mob demanded she give Hayley and Paramore credit so we should make it clear for those of you not following the minutiae of how legal proceedings work in the music business when an artist is accused of stealing from another artist there's a certain way this usually goes the only way legal cases have ever been decided to give someone credit and surrender royalties is when they rip off the note choices in both melody and rhythm in a song since after all there's only a few notes to work with and patterns that feel right in any genre and there's only so many ways to flip it over time before everything sounds the same and while you may think Olivia and these other artists songs sound alike sounding alike is not something that can be sued for well that was true until in 2018 a lawsuit was decided that shall we say blurred the lines of what can be sued for in music I am of course talking about Robin Thicke and Pharrell's bird lines you know the horniest song your mom will grind someone on the dance floor too at a wedding this lawsuit was the first of its kind and it allowed the royalties of a song to go to a song for sounding similar instead of being an actual note for note ripoff now many people including myself wrote about how dangerous this lawsuit was and it was pretty unanimous that this would be a horrible thing for music that will award older artists and discourage younger artists from creating since hearing blurred lines compared to Marvin Gaye's song gotta give it up it was clear a lot of creativity went into blurred lines to make it a new modern song but it clearly borrowed some inspiration but no less inspiration that is common in literally nearly every other hit song if you search hard enough through the artist's influences the reason this decision was seen as so wrong was it would open the floodgates for older artists to grab younger artist royalties as they had access to the feeling styles of songs oftentimes before the artist were even born but what many of us who've created a lot of music were concerned about was how many artists would be discouraged to create songs if this became precedent while we all have to create because we love music the idea that a rich old bloated artist could rob you of your creativity since your song was a little derivative of theirs doesn't exactly make you want to create and this lawsuit paved the way for that being a regular occurrence denying that nearly every creative work we've loved is inspired by something with small tweaks to make it emotionally your own denies the way nearly every song throughout history has been created but obviously what we had in these two cases with Olivia Rodrigo wasn't some old boomer making the accusations but instead an online mob who is immersed in what it's like to create something outside of tweets that bash artists all day just as the blurred lines case was decided by a judge who didn't get the creative bounds of songwriting and understanding the implications of his actions the brain dead mob thinks Taylor Swift invented a singing style that could be heard on hundreds of songs i mean really are we gonna allow the meagos to start suing every rapper who started using triplets after they made it prominent half a decade ago i sure hope not because i was just getting used to not having to hear that anymore but sadly we haven't even gotten to when the old people came for Olivia Olivia did a photo shoot where she was dressed as a broken down prom queen you know a trope we've seen countless times before and then Courtney love an artist who should know better as she was commonly accused of theft throughout her career and for not writing her own songs came to sniff at Olivia's wounds and see if she could draw some blood herself the accusation that Olivia ripped off holes lived through this album cover is of course beyond stupid seeing as this is already a cliche and Courtney made her version of it 12 years before Olivia was even born but what truly made it egregious is Courtney knows she took influence from elsewhere in fact the photographer of holes lived through this album cover had recounted in an oral history of the album that heard Courtney discuss taking inspiration from the movie carry and of course Courtney love looks just as different on the cover from carry as Olivia looks from this trashy rumored husband murderer i so i particularly think Courtney is bad in this case since she should know better whereas not all of that not so woke mob is just ignorant to how creativity works but in walks a twist of someone behaving the way they should Olivia's next accusation was for the song brutal for being a direct rip off of Elvis Costello's song pump it up you know a song that's 43 years old aka more than twice Olivia's age and this time it's actually funny since this comparison held the most weight as the melody and rhythm are exactly alike but just like an episode of Ted Lasso where you expect the person who would seemingly behave the worst to do that that's actually who ends up behaving properly Elvis does the right thing by replying to the accusation of Olivia's theft with this is fine by me it's how rock and roll works you know take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy that's what i did look at that someone finally being real about how songs are created it's actually who had the biggest opportunity to be an asshole about it so let's get real here we're supposed to evolve and create from the past but that ability to do so is hindered when artists have to create by fearing a mob is going to suggest anything they do is similar to another artist this is a dark path to go down that is not going to be good for music if it continues and artists need to stand up when borrowing is just as equal to the way other artists have borrowed throughout music history i do think Olivia deserves some blame here in that there's no way she should have given Taylor or Paramore retroactive credit and that was her choice it's a bowing to a precedent in music that will only hurt younger artists and a trend that will hurt many songwriters who have the royalties and compensation for their creations to be treated the way those who created before them were compensated the very people they'll be paying off will have been able to borrow in the same way these songwriters have and instead get to keep all the royalties but because people have not been standing up to this unbelievably wrong precedent we will have misallocation of royalties to older artists and why fear the most is great songwriters and artists of today will be afraid to share their music with us if it sounds the least bit derivative of another person's work i want you to think about this since every single song you've ever loved is derivative of something and every one of the songwriters always knew which of their favorite thieves they were stealing from what if they held your favorite song back out of fear that they are just going to get sued instead of sharing it for you to enjoy that's a music world i don't want any of us to live in since it's a world without our favorite songs brianino once said music is a conversation and what's enjoyable about it is you're hearing the next part of that conversation artists give and take from one another and as long as it's not a direct lift that should be seen as part of what gives us great music not what should be punished if we're going to continue this trend young artists are going to have to pay every established artist for the rest of time and this is going to become a system where we just pay up to old artists with every song so instead of bullying artists that their song sounds similar to other songs stick up for young artists and make something new music is about emotions and alivia made an emotionally powerful record we should not be punishing artists who have to exist in a genre that has been working with the same melodic structure for 74 years as well if you want my opinion on who should be bullied that should go to hailey williams taylor swift jack antinoff and st vinson we're not brave enough to know that they have borrowed from other writers just as much as alivia borrowed from them and their silence when they know this is true it really speaks volumes and is exactly what could protect music from going to a dark place i hope they come to their senses all right that's it if you enjoyed this video this is what we discuss on this channel as well as creativity and how to grow your fan base from zero to 10 000 fans so i hope you like this video subscribe and leave a comment below if you want to talk about it more thanks for watching