Do people remember peak oil? It’s the theory that running out of oil was never the problem, but the crunch that happens after you reach a peak in production. Like once we empty out all the easy wells and output starts declining, if demand remains the same then naturally there would be less and less to go around. Which would cause prices to shoot up, send shockwaves through the economy. We have always seemed to manage to find new oil,

Changing the laws to allow compulsory licensing would probably direct us towards a culture that was more friendly to reuse. There might be some pushback to start, but in the end people would be writing good new songs with old melodies, and I assume it would become more acceptable. Maybe it could even make cross-cultural pollination more acceptable as well. Aside from music made by Afrodescendant people, there seems to be a slight taboo against using melodic patterns from cultures

Although even then it would be nice to recombine melodies in new songs, or build on top of melodies. How much of the psychological effects of music are single key melodies, and how much of it is the combination of melodies into the different sections of a complete song? Do you get in the ‘Hotel California’ mood just straight from the fingerpicked chords it opens with, is it the interplay of the chord progression and the sung melody, would it

So maybe the root issue – if there is a root issue – is a culture of only using melodies once. And maybe that’s ok, maybe they are unique expressions, maybe they only need to exist in their original usage. It could be that the nature of melodies is that they are born perfectly formed. Generally changing a few notes in a melody will either create something that doesn’t sound as good, or will be something that the original songwriter

But one way or another, those accidental uses do seem to happen often enough, and the history of music is a story of borrowing and improving. My feeling is that the issue here is a taboo against using other people’s melodies. It’s funny how sampling is seen as much more legitimate. Samples are a reference, a piece of musical collage, creating something new with the old. If they still do want you to get a license. But reusing a melody

They would have more competition from music that was reusing old melodies, a higher % of total music profits would end up as royalties paid to existing copyright holders. Just structurally, future musicians aren’t as influential – they’re still writing songs in their parent’s basements, they can’t really throw their weight around as a group. And they would probably be combining their new innovations with old melodies, so it might just work out they write better songs and pay royalties.