Hello, everyone -

For quite sometime, I have read people's concerns and comments on the forum regarding copyrighted styles and copyrighted music, in general. There is an expensive book I own entitled, "This Business of Music" by M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Shemel that discusses, not only all laws of recording music, but musical arrangements and that they generally do not fall under copyright law as does musical compositions. Arrangements used on popular records rarely qualify for copyrighting and generally are permitted ONLY if made by the copyright owner of the original work or with the owner's consent. The copyright owner, whether publisher or writer, ordinarily does not prepare the record arrangement and makes no claim for copyright in the arrangement. Nor is the consent of the music publisher obtained for the arrangement to be copyrighted by another person. The copyright owner issues a more or less standard mechanical license to record, which in practice is deemed to indicate that no objection will be made to the arrangements required for purposes of recording. The license in this instance amounts to an agreement not to object rather than a consent or grants of rights. However, arrangements of works in the public domain may qualify for copyrighting without the consent of the former copyright owner.

With the above, what does this say about copyrighting styles, which in essence, is an arrangement? Are there new laws protecting people who create styles? A good question. Generally, these styles (presets from keyboards) aren't more than 4 measures long. With copyrighted material, (songs) you don't have to pay royalties if you don't sing or play in public more than 8 measures of a copyrighted song. Questions, questions!!! Personally, I don't think keyboard companies can do anything about using their styles. It boils down to the fact that they put all this technology into their keyboards to copy styles from one another - let them live with it.