Can a musical scale be registered as a musical work in its own right?

Almost everywhere in the world, musical works that are performed in public are registered with copyright collecting societies in order to receive royalties for such use. Authors can register their rights for their compositions, song lyrics, and even for arrangements of existing works. In Germany, GEMA (Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights) is responsible for the registration and administration of such rights; in Austria, it is AKM; in Switzerland, SUISA; and in the U.S., several organizations: ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. These copyright collecting societies also represent the interests of authors from other parts of the world within their respective countries.

In the world of music, there is an almost limitless variety of ideas and possibilities, styles, and opportunities to make and listen to music. Ultimately, however, everything is based on the same notes, which are combined into chords, melodies, and rhythms—perceived by each person differently as more or less beautiful. The basic framework for melodies and harmonies consists of scales, which simply arrange notes in an ascending or descending sequence. For example, in Nina Simone’s 1959 song “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” a simple scale appears right at the beginning: a descending sequence of seven notes in A major played on the piano.

This might lead one to wonder: Can a musical scale be registered as an original musical work with a copyright collection society? Most people would probably answer off the cuff: No, you can’t register such a “commonplace” musical concept as your own idea.

This was the question posed in early 1985 by the then-relatively unknown German songwriters Hugo Egon Balder and Jacky Dreksler. Since they suspected that GEMA would not accept a simple scale, they wrote the song “The Scale Song,” in which the scale played in C major was incorporated, accompanied by English lyrics: “Yes, from now on you go to jail, playing the diatonic scale.” And they couldn’t believe it themselves: After three weeks, GEMA sent them confirmation of the work with a work number, thereby certifying both the composition and the lyrics for them. They saw this as an opportunity to sue the creators of countless works in the years to come if they, too, used simple scales—whether in their entirety or in part—after that point; they could already picture themselves living a life of luxury.

Encouraged by this, the two authors decided to register other musical trivialities with GEMA—and they submitted the piece “The Pause,” which actually contained no notes at all, only rest symbols. However, the copyright society apparently caught on to their scheme and responded with a very humorous letter stating that this work could unfortunately not be recognized, as it was not a musicalized pause and all the sheet music had been lost, which an expert had already searched for in vain.

In another letter sent shortly before, GEMA stated that the registration for “The Scale Song” must be considered invalid, as the melody was identical to an existing work, the author of which still had to be identified.

The two gentlemen had clearly gone too far and were very upset that, in the end, they were left with no registration at all—but with the realization that you cannot claim as your own anything that is part of the public domain.

One could, for example, imagine trying to have a mere sequence of the same note repeated over and over protected as one’s own work. Such sequences of notes are not uncommon, and sometimes a single note has been played more than 20 times in a row, especially in accompaniments. Such an endeavor would also very likely be rejected by the copyright collecting societies.

 

Source: “Find The Liar, Mittermeier,” Season 2, Episode 4, March 26, 2026, BR Fernsehen—available in the ARD media library, starting at 34:34

/ULE

Digital-only publications – sources and documentation issues

This article is intended to provide further insight into the research activities of our editorial team, following our article from April 14, 2020, in which we named our most important sources, and our article from July 14, 2020, in which we explained which sources we use to track down older songs. The last article focused on releases on records – shellac, vinyl, etc. So now let us turn our attention to purely digital releases.

We generally ignored such releases for a very long time. For a long time we resisted including purely digital releases in the database, because there was nothing physical to read or listen to. And yet it was clear from the start that the trend would move toward digital distribution channels and that we would not be able to close ourselves off to this forever.

In 2012, a physical medium ceased to be a prerequisite for a database entry

On April 16, 2012, we finally announced (in German only) that we were opening our database to songs available for purchase – or provably previously available – exclusively as downloads in a (legal) digital shop. Our concern that some entries would eventually become unverifiable, because songs disappear from shops after being added to the database, would prove to be justified. In individual cases, we deleted songs from the database because we could no longer find a single trace on the Internet that the song had ever existed. We therefore had to learn that it is not enough to note a link to a music download in order to have access to details about the song later. Just as we cannot afford to buy and store every physical record we list in the database, we cannot purchase and archive every digital release internally. When a record goes out of stock, there are often still many websites documenting its existence. Digital releases, which can be brought to market with minimal effort, sometimes disappear as quickly as they arrived, attracted little attention in the meantime, and vanish completely into obscurity. We can document them, but sometimes all that remains is an entry in our database and occasionally in the WayBack Machine.

With the redevelopment of coverinfo.de into COVER.INFO, we began systematically saving key publication data such as the label in a structured format. But of course this does not protect against a song eventually becoming impossible to find anywhere. This article series is about sources. In the case of digital releases, one must simply acknowledge that the sources are the respective download shops such as Amazon. Unfortunately, the shops do not always provide sufficient metadata for the songs. Some songs appear under common first names or other nondescript artist names that give no indication of who is behind them.

It is of course helpful when songs are also available on YouTube, so that we can embed them for you. YouTube videos often disappear even faster, sometimes even when they were uploaded by the music labels themselves. Nevertheless, YouTube naturally also features on our list of important sources.

Songs from major streaming platforms were added from 2024 onwards

This new registration practice from 2012 did, however, require at least one thing: there must have been an opportunity to officially download the songs without any technical workarounds. The music consumer must therefore have had at least the option of permanently keeping the purchased song. In the years that followed, music streaming on platforms such as Spotify became increasingly popular. Anyone with a subscription and a constant Internet connection naturally has little interest in downloading songs to their own devices. Remarkably, however, it became increasingly common in the 2020s for digital releases to be made available not on both download shops and streaming platforms, but exclusively via streaming. Officially, these songs could no longer be purchased for unrestricted ownership – they could only be listened to for as long as one held a subscription to the streaming service and the song remained available there. Songs did not disappear from streaming platforms only in a few isolated cases. This makes a streaming platform a very problematic source – an especially ephemeral one. However, since releasing exclusively on streaming platforms has become a common form of distribution, COVER.INFO could no longer afford to ignore it despite its reservations. The editorial team finally decided in August 2024 to also accept songs in the database that have been released exclusively on the major commercial streaming services Spotify, Deezer, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, and/or Apple Music.

The problem of sparse metadata for songs exists on streaming platforms just as it does in download shops. Information on authorship is frequently missing, which makes our work more difficult. In such cases, the only option is to listen and compare with songs of the same name to determine whether it is a cover version.

Despite the difficulties in providing evidence for digital releases after they disappear from the relevant platforms, documentation by COVER.INFO proves to be important: if we were to ignore such releases, we would not only be failing to account for the fact that distribution formats change over time due to technological innovation, but cover versions from more recent times would also be represented in our database in a very incomplete way. The distorted picture that would result is not in our interest.

We conclude this insight into our work with a follow-up question that we discuss in our editorial team from time to time, without having yet been able to agree on a policy: How should we handle songs that were published exclusively in videos on YouTube – which is not a music platform? Especially on YouTube, music releases are frequently taken down. Under what conditions are such videos relevant and should be documented by us as songs?

/TWA