Mar 01 2025 54 mins 17
If you hear the term “forensic musicologist” and conjure up detectives with fingerprint dusters and a magnifying glass, well, metaphorically you’re not far off. The job of a forensic musicologist is to apply musical knowledge to questions around copyright, explain musical facts, and put them into context so that a court can arrive at a decision with the best information available.
Brian McBrearty is a forensic musicologist, and he joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald to discuss real-world cases of music infringement and the multi-dimensional approach that he takes in his analyses. We tackle the question of music notation and how it plays a role in Brian’s process, and talk tech — including the acceleration in artificial intelligence, both as a potential means of forensic analysis, and as a creator of potentially infringing content.
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