Engineers at Spotify have made notable progress on the user-friendly streaming platform so far this year, including the launch of a “Lyric Search” feature along with a possible in-app “Karaoke Feature” still in the development phase. A new report published this week also reveals that Spotify is seeking European patent approval for its proposed “Plagiarism Risk Detector And Interface” technology, which would both accurately and efficiently inform songwriters or labels with the approval, or rejection, of a new composition that may include plagiarized elements.
A report shared by Music Business Worldwide on Tuesday details Spotify’s desire to utilize its new “Software-assisted detection” intelligent technology developed by its own team of scientists, which could scan the risks of potential plagiarism via its sheet music in real-time, rather than the lengthier process of manual examination and detection (or even worse, litigation).
The proposed technology would allow for a lead sheet (written musical notation that specifies the essential elements and notation of a song including the melody, lyrics, chords, and harmony) to be scanned through a “Plagiarism detector” which would compare the composition to any other songs already stored in Spotify’s pre-existing database. If the technology finds “a similarity value” within the sheet, the songwriter or copyright-holder of that song would be sent a message describing in detail any detected sign of potential plagiarism. On the other hand, if the composition appears to be completely original, the applicant would receive a message along the lines of, “The melodic fragment [of your song] appears to be completely new.”
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The technology was developed in part by Spotify’s Creator Technology Research Lab Director (and A.I. expert) François Pachet. In addition to A.I.-assisted accuracy, one of the major benefits of Spotify’s plagiarism detection would be its real-time results. This process would be able to inform the songwriter/composer/record label of the need to change any compositional elements of the proposed work to avoid possible infringement, rather than determine any problems after the song has been recorded, mixed, and officially released.
The company’s patent application notes that this would rid the process of the time and imperfect manpower needed to make such a decision. Copy within the application notes, “When executed manually, plagiarism detection is usually performed by experts and lawyers. Manual detection of music plagiarism requires substantial effort, skill and excellent memory, and is generally known to be impractical. Software-assisted detection for text plagiarism on the other hand allows vast collections of documents to be compared to each other, making successful plagiarism detection much more likely.”
The patent application continues in stating that the Graphical User Interface (GUI) would be “More intuitive, more precise as to the portion of the work that may be considered plagiaristic, and that provides dynamic visual feedback in substantially real-time.”
Click here to read Spotify’s patent application on their proposed plagiarism technology.
[H/T Music Business Worldwide]