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The music industry faces a shortage of copyright infringement insurance, said attorney Derek C. Crownover, partner at the Nashville, Tenn., office of the law firm of Hall, Booth, Smith & Slover. Most of his clients are self-insured. They also face issues when it comes to enforcing the laws aimed at violators. This problem, however, could pale in comparison with risks posed by new file-sharing technologies.

When one country song is discovered to be suspiciously similar to another, said Crownover, musicians and songwriters have few options, mainly because that second song must be a drastically similar reproduction--not just a wail borrowing the familiar themes of pickup trucks, beer and ex-spouses.

The aggrieved parties could bring the two songs to a musicologist, someone trained in detecting similarities in songs.

But musicologists do not come cheap. They can cost upward of $15,000, enough to dissuade many writers and artists from pursuing the case.

When it comes to sampling--say, when rap stars splice parts of other artists' songs into their work--there is precedence, however, for litigants to go on, said Crownover.

Crownover pointed to the recent so-called Bridgeport litigation. The owners of the music of funk artists Parliament-Funkadelic, Bridgeport Music Inc., sued enough defendants for sampling violations to fill 10 pages "separated only by commas," said Crownover.

Sampling is still a huge issue in the music industry today, said Crownover. But hip-hop producers are becoming more sophisticated at altering the borrowed music just enough to be legal and at asking permission from the original writers, said Crownover.

File-sharing will also continue to strike a discord for the music industry, said Karl M. Braun, a colleague and partner at Hall, Booth, whose clients have sold more than 50 million records.

The industry doesn't have the technology skills, Braun said, to actually put a halt to it.

"They're trying to convert to the tech side," said Derek, "but they're way behind."

As a result, brick-and-mortar music stores could be singing a swan song in five years, the attorneys predicted, speaking at an industry event this fall in Nashville.

October 15, 2006

Copyright 2006© LRP Publications