Wait, who wrote that?

With new music coming out every day, isn't it all starting to sound the same? Have you ever listened to a song and said "Hey that sounds familiar?" Well lets take a look.

This song focus on just how 4 chords are used over and over in songs. How such a simple pattern can have so many possibilities. But what if we take this idea into the computer realm. Software is now being created where it loads music from several sources such as Mozart and Beethoven and from those sources finds certain types of patterns and starts to "compose" its own music. Triumph of the Cyborg Composer is an article on David Cope's software that does just that. He developed a program call Emily Howell to create some beautiful works of art. You can listen to some samples right here:

Sample 1

Sample 2 

But I'm not here to talk about how does the music sound or how the software works, but who gets the credit? If we look at the samples above, who wrote them? One of the obvious answers is David Cope. He created the software, he created the music. But is that true? Could one say Emily Howell created it? But that's just a program, right? Or is it the original composers who created these patterns in the first place? 

Whatever or whoever you think deserves credit, one thing can be certain, we are pushing into a new realm of music. A realm where computers can figure out what we like and create new songs on the fly and the role of composing music is diminishing and the same four chords can be used to write any song.