Spotify Working on AI Technology to Help Songwriters Avoid Plagiarism

We've seen some pretty big name artists over the years involved in plagiarism lawsuits, but those days could soon be coming to an end with the help of a new artificial intelligence technology being developed by Spotify.

According to Music Business Worldwide, the streaming giant is currently working on technology that will let you know if your song is copying an element from another composition, with the possibility of it even being close to a real time application.

Spotify recently filed for a European patent for what is being dubbed a "Plagiarism Risk Detector and Interface" technology. According to MBW, a "lead sheet" of score or musical notations will be fed through the detector, which would then access preexisting encoded lead sheets to check for plurality of compositions within its database. After examining the consistencies, a set of messages would then display the "detected level of plagiarism" singling out chord sequence, melody fragments, harmony and other factors.

The turnaround time also weighs significantly as a potential plus, with the possibility of a near turnaround allowing the songwriter/composer to tweak elements of their music before spending time (and money) recording a final version.

While Spotify acknowledged in the filing that other plagiarism-detecting techniques have been proposed prior, they argue that their new technology will provide "significant improvements over manual approaches, they still require significant expertise and are not suited for operation by typical artists and composers, especially artists and composers who are interested in detecting plagiarism during the composition process."

“Such a tool would allow artists to generate lead sheets more quickly and confidently by detecting and providing visual feedback as to whether any aspect of the work has a probability of being deemed plagiaristic," stated Spotify in the filing.

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