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14 Berkeley J. Ent. & Sports L. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/bjesl14 and id is 1 raw text is: Music Royalty Splits: Copyright and Music Industry Practices Behind the Increase in Writer Credits and Rights Clearance Emma Perot' LLB, LLM, BPTC, PhD ABSTRACT This paper argues that there are legal and non-legal reasons for the increase in the number of songwriters per chart topping song from an average of 2 songwriters in 1959, when the Billboard Hot 100 annual chart was launched, to 4.4 songwriters in 2023. In this article, thematic analysis will be conducted to examine the developments in copyright jurisprudence and the music industry that have influenced this trend. One of the main influencing factors affecting the trend was the rise of rap and hip hop from the 1990s, where sampling and interpolation were common, resulting in songs with high numbers of credited songwriters because copyright jurisprudence required rights to be cleared. In addition, these genres often credited the producer as a songwriter due to their integral role in song creation. Both collaborative approaches subsequently transcended genres and are now common in mainstream pop music. Additionally, the use of songwriting camps means that many writers can be involved in a song. These developments are buttressed by the nefarious DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38B56D667 1. Thank you to the University of the West Indies St Augustine Campus Research and Publication Fund for providing funding for this project. Thank you to my research assistants for collecting the data: head RA Solange Joseph, Breana Babwah, Jessica Deonanan, Leah-Marie Lalsingh, Valini Ramkaran, Mikhila Sayers, Celine Rampaul, Catilin Alexander, and Priyanka Reemaul. Thank you Alexandra Ghany, for coordination assistance at the outset of the project and Brandon Joseph, Shivana Ramkissoon-Joseph and Justin Koo for guidance on excel and data analysis. Thank you Tazia Mehdi, Ajit Mallavarapu and Sean Lee for the expertise in data analytics and visualization. Finally, thank you to everyone who provided feedback at IPSC 2023 and the Texas A&M IP Scholars Roundtable 2023, in particular: Eric Johnson, Jeff Slattery, Zvi Rosen, Tim McFarlin, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, William Henslee, Peter Yu, Tim Hsieh, Danny Friedman, Rachael Dickson, and Lucas Osbom. 1

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