IPR and music: Andy’s new publication

This chapter fundamentally challenges the received wisdom of the ‘digital age’ and music, which is technologically reductive and generalized. Instead I argue for the need to attend to the situated nature of the practices that constitute music. In so doing I bring back the material to ‘digital discourse’, and reconnect with space and society. In so doing I break the binary divide of the digital and material and remake it as a hybrid. The structure of the chapter is as follows: I first introduce the idea of copyright and ownership in music: what it is, what can be owned, and how local institutions shape it. In the second and third parts I elaborate the issues and some practical consequences through exploration of first ownership, and second, trade. I explore these through the lens of the two types of “rights” in music: moral and mechanical. I further show how these are interwoven, and embedded in space.