Photo by panumas nikhomkhai
The word "theft" is one of the trending words in our society today. People want to enjoy but they are not willing to suffer, therefore they look for easy ways, they take shortcuts, and they take what doesn't belong to them and derive benefits from it.
Theft is everywhere in our world today. If you ask me why the act is so common, I would say it is a result of laziness and selfishness.
In music, theft is simply using someone's musical ideas, sounds, lyrics, and so on, without taking permission from the person or giving credit to him/her. It is just like plagiarism in writing. Using someone's work without giving credit to them.
Some people might say, "it is normal," but it isn't, that act simply means you are making a claim of the work to be yours and it is a very bad thing to do to anyone.
Imagine, the labor the person did to make that work a reality, then one came from nowhere and just began to use it and make gains out of it without even recognizing who made the effort to make it a reality, isn't that evil?
Music theft is very common among artists, especially the local ones. Most of the local artists in my place do this thing a lot.
They will just go ahead and find any nice instrumental from a celebrity's song and then sing a song with it, sometimes even making videos with the sound without the knowledge of that celebrity or indicating that it's a cover or the sound isn't theirs.
Some people can even go the length of using some lyrics from someone's song and not indicating anywhere that the word of that song belongs to another person.
Sometimes I wonder what deal is there to just indicate that something doesn't belong to you but to someone. If you can't give credit to the person, Kindly avoid their work. I don't see a big deal here.
Some years ago, there was a talk about an influential musician in Nigeria about music theft. I don't know how true it is but the accusers who claimed to be his friends and colleagues in music said he stole the lyrics to the song they planned together and sang it alone.
Of the truth, the song was one of a kind, it trended so well, to date, I am still in love with the song. I am sorry, but I can't mention the name of the artist or the song.
They were so mad at him for the act, it was something that transpired long ago but they always bring the issue up. If not that his music career is so established, I am sure something like that would have brought him down.
I am totally against music theft and other forms of theft. It is something terrible to do. Although, some people commit the act of theft ignorantly. I think it would be nice if musicians were given education about theft in music.
Some people are just into music and they don't really know these things. After getting such education anyone who breaks the law should face the wrath of the law.
We can avoid music theft by doing proper research before releasing our song. We should endeavor to check if our sounds or lyrics were already used by someone.
We can ask for permission from the original owner of the song. If we can't get access to them then it's best we just don't use it.
There is nothing wrong with being 100% original, creating your own music, being unique with your music, and being creative. If everything is ours, it will save us the drama of trying to give credit or begging for collaboration. It is as simple as that.
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