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“Nobody explains copyright like Jennifer Jenkins…required reading for anyone who makes music, loves music, or cares about musicians and the arts more generally…a towering accomplishment and a brilliant read.” —Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic

This is the open access, full color, 2nd edition of Music Copyright, Creativity and Culture, an introduction to the fascinating story of the legal, economic, aesthetic and technological forces that shape the music we love. It can be read by anyone who interested in that story and is also used as a textbook in classes ranging from undergraduate to law school. It is freely available to noncommercially share, copy and even modify under a Creative Commons license and has no connection to Oxford University Press, which published the first edition.

The book has an innovative design, combining accessible prose with timelines, infographics, flowcharts, and excerpts from a graphic novel. Through a series of chapters that take readers step by step through the fundamentals of copyright and creativity, Jennifer Jenkins clarifies basic concepts, lays out an engaging history, points out cultural effects of legal rules, and tells scores of stories of great musical controversies, past and present. The book is paired with a series of Spotify and YouTube playlists, so that readers can listen to the material under review. The end result is neither dry nor obscure. And this is as it should be, because the legal rules surrounding our musical culture are both important and captivating.

The second edition is now in full color. It also offers a number of important updates.

• Case updates include in depth explanations of important new decisions dealing with artists such as Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny and even Katy Perry. Has the tide of infringement suits turned since the Blurred Lines decision? The answer turns out to be perhaps, but important questions remain.
• The book explores the types of changes that generative AI may bring to every part of the music ecosystem – from whether training an AI system on copyrighted music is fair use, to how music gets made and how we find it, to the changing economic effects of the music marketplace and even the social meaning of what music is, and whether machines can make it.
• There are clear explanations of recent changes in the law, such as the Supreme Court’s recent decision on secondary liability, Cox v Sony.

Praise for Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture

“This is a textbook that students would actually open and read! It breaks down complex legal issues of copyright and intellectual property in a way that students will grasp and have fun while doing so.”
   —Chris Vrenna, Grammy-winning musician and Assistant Professor of Music, University of Michigan

“The highlight of this book is that it provides clear historical context and an accurate depiction of the current music industry, with a consistent thread and acknowledgement of the creative, which no book that I’ve seen has addressed in this way. For this reason I think it will both appeal to, and be very appropriate, for music and music business students.”
   —Lee Dannay, A&R and artist development executive and adjunct faculty, New York University

“This is a contemporary copyright text which does a great job of setting up important information on how copyright applies to musicians in a novel way – via a text and graphic novel.”
   —Jeremy Peters, Assistant Professor of Music Business, Wayne State University

About the author

Jennifer Jenkins teaches intellectual property law at Duke Law School, where she has offered classes in Music Copyright since 2007. She is the Director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and writes its annual Public Domain Day website, which is featured in hundreds of news stories each year. Apart from this book, she is also the co-author (with James Boyle) of the open coursebook Intellectual Property: Cases and Materials (6th ed, 2024), its accompanying statutory supplements, and two comic books –  Theft! A History of Music, a 2000-year history of musical borrowing and regulation, and Bound By Law?, which covers copyright, fair use and documentary film. Her articles include Mark of the Devil: The University as Brand Bully. You can probably guess which university it is about. In private practice, Jenkins worked on numerous copyright cases, including the suit against a parody of Gone With the Wind. She is also a lifelong music nerd, whose performances as a pianist probably plateaued when she was 11.