Ron Alexander Memorial Lectures in Musicology – Matthew D. Morrison, Stanford University

Title: Right vs. Rights: How AI Challenges Copyright and IP in Music

Abstract: While the developments in AI and popular music continue to grow in use exponentially, the regulations on the application of these technologies commercially and otherwise are lagging in the U.S. Copyright office. As I will demonstrate in this talk, this lack of regulation is largely a result of historical determination of music as property in relation to tangible or “literate” forms of representation versus how music actually functions through sound and other “intangible” forms of performance. I will consider how this historical determinacy has both racialized and capitalistic dimensions that inform the lack of urgency around regulating AI in the U.S.

Matthew D. Morrison, Ph.D., a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He is a musicologist and violinist whose research focuses on the relationship between music, identity, performance, as well as property and politics in and beyond American popular culture, with a particular focus on the analysis of race.  He is the author of Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (UC Press, 2024), which has been recognized through accolades such as the Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, The Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society of American Music, an honorable mention from the Royal Music Association’s Cambridge University Book Prize, and named a “Best Music Book of 2024) by Rolling Stone Magazine. His current research explores the ethics of AI and Intellectual Property in music.

Admission Information

• Free Admission