The Strange Practice of Retroactive Songwriting Credits

Earlier this week, we looked at the story of Stella Lefty, a rising star in the music world who found a hit with her song Boston. However, despite her success, she has faced allegations of plagiarism in five of her songs, including her hit.

While three of the claims are still unresolved, the main one, involving Boston, was resolved by granting Noah Kahan, the author of the 2022 song Stick Season, a retroactive songwriting credit. This gives Kahan a share of the publishing rights to Lefty’s biggest song, possibly earning him millions in royalties.

However, this is far from the first time that this has happened. Olivia Rodrigo gave a retroactive songwriting credit to Taylor Swift and two co-authors in 2021. There, the song in question was Rodrigo’s Deja Vu, a song that she acknowledged was influenced by Swift’s song Cruel Summer.

The same year, she did it again with members of the band Paramore. There the song in question was Rodrigo’s Good 4 U, which was inspired by Paramore’s 2007 song Misery Business.

That said, even the phrase “retroactive songwriting credit” sounds odd. How can one retroactively give credit to someone for a song? What does it actually mean or accomplish?

But the most important question is, most likely, why is the practice on the rise? The answer is not very surprising.

A Very Incomplete History of Retroactive Songwriting Credits

The music industry is somewhat unique in that it has a very rigid and formalized system of tracking authorship in songs. While being the author of a book can often be a fluid matter, the music industry registers and tracks who is a songwriter on a particular track.

That system is in place to ensure that royalties are properly distributed. However, it also enables the practice of retroactively granting songwriting credits. Especially in the age of streaming music, it’s relatively trivial to add another songwriter to a track, even after the song has been released.

That said, this practice is not new. One of the most famous examples of this was in 1966 when The Beach Boys gave Chuck Berry the full songwriting credit for the Surfin’ USA. Other famous examples of this include the dispute between Queen & David Bowie with Vanilla Ice involving the 1990 song Ice, Ice Baby.

Still, perhaps the most unusual example involves the 1997 song Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve. In that song, the band sampled an orchestral version of The Rolling Stones’ 1965 song The Last Time. The band had licensed the sample but a dispute rose about the scope of that license. In the end, the band forfeited all songwriting credit for the song.

However, in 2019, The Rolling Stones returned the rights and the songwriting credits to The Verve frontman, Richard Ashcroft. This makes it a rare example of a double retroactive songwriting credit.

But while the practice isn’t new, it is definitely on the rise. This has been particularly true in the last 10-12 years or so. Even more bizarre, we’re seeing more cases like Lefty and Rodrigo’s where the credit is given without a significant legal threat.

So what has changed? A lot of things.

What’s Changed with the Practice

For most of history, this was a rare practice and almost always tied to either a legal dispute or the serious threat of one. It simply wasn’t very common for songwriter credits to change drastically after a song was released. Yes, it happened, but the incidents were notable in part because of their rarity.

Many attribute this rise to the Blurred Lines case. There, in March 2015, a jury awarded the estate of Marvin Gaye $7.4 million in damages after finding that the Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams 2013 song Blurred Lines was an infringement of Gaye’s 1976 song Got to Give It Up.

The verdict was shocking at the time. Even though the verdict was heavily fact-dependent and was unlikely to be widely replicated, it still sent shockwaves through the industry. Even after the verdict was followed by other decisions that were in favor of current songwriters, the psychological impact of the verdict was and is still present.

Songwriters became eager to avoid litigation. It is much easier and often much cheaper to simply give a songwriting credit to someone than even risk a lawsuit.

However, technology has also evolved. Tools such as ACRCloud can scan for unlicensed samples in other songs. These are often used aggressively by legacy artists to find songs that mirror their previous work.

At the same time, music production has become much more accessible. Many artists like Lefty get their start not writing songs in a controlled studio environment, but rather in their bedroom posting songs on social media. Many artists don’t understand all the rules around sampling and similarity between songs.

When you combine all of these factors, you get an environment where uncleared samples and similarities between songs are more common and the fear of litigation is much higher. If you bring those forces together, it’s easy to see why artists are more willing to surrender songwriting credits for songs.

To be clear, this practice is not universally beloved. Many in the industry argue that this practice makes claims of copyright infringement risk-free. Simply rattling sabers doesn’t cost anything and can reap huge rewards. However, others note that this practice is often the only way that some artists, in particular underprivileged artists, can get any credit for their influence on popular music.

Regardless, this practice is likely here to stay and, barring a major shift in the industry, is likely to grow.

Bottom Line

The music industry is unique in that it has a formalized system for tracking authorship. This includes formal definitions of who is and who is not an author on a song, third party entitles that track the information and, with streaming platforms, the ability to quickly push changes to user-facing services.

When it comes to why the practice is increasing, you have a legal climate that has many in the industry afraid of litigation and technology that makes it easer to find similarities between songs. It’s a recipe ripe for quickly and quietly issuing retroactive songwriting credit for songs.

So, while this approach to authorship is unique to the music industry, I can’t say that I’m 100% sure that this is a problem that needs to be solved. Yes, there are legitimate concerns with this practice. Yes, it could encourage bad actors. However, it is still a choice that the artists and their teams make. They could choose litigation if they wanted to. Typically, they have the resources to take on such a fight.

In general, I support artists being able to do what they please with their creations, including giving songwriting credits to third parties. Furthermore, they know better than anyone else how much their work was influenced by others. They are the ones best suited to decide how much credit to give, if any.

When it’s all said and done, I think the fear bad actors exploiting this practice is overblown. That said, I do think there will be changes to way musicians write and produce their music. After all, being able to prove how a work was created is important not just for this, but for addressing the inevitable allegations of using AI.

That, in turn, is a lesson for just about any creator. That it’s important to be able to discuss show how a work was created, for multiple reasons.