This book explores how (UK) copyright law shapes a cultural hierarchy of music, positioning Western classical music as 'high culture' and (Scottish) traditional music as 'low culture'.

Taking an interdisciplinary, socio-legal, and critical approach, the book connects copyright law, cultural production, and cultural perception and addresses the central issue through three sub-themes. (1) It reveals the resonances and dissonances between copyright notions (ie originality, authorship, and fixation) and the respective production paradigms (ie the creation process, creatorship, and creation form) of the two music genres. (2) It investigates how these notions reconfigure and perpetuate the production paradigm of a music genre in historical (ie the 1770s–1840s) and contemporary contexts. (3) It analyses how the resulting changes in the production paradigm endow a music genre with new aesthetic characteristics and ultimately ascribe the genre to 'high culture' or 'low culture'. Bringing these themes together, the book develops a model of how copyright law shapes cultural hierarchy.

As the first book dedicated to examining the cultural hierarchy of music through a copyright lens, Music Copyright and Cultural Hierarchy fills a critical research gap in intellectual property law, (ethno)musicology, and cultural studies. The model provides a new framework for examining the impact of law on cultural production and perception, within and beyond the field of music. It will spark interest among intellectual property researchers, critical legal scholars, legal historians, (ethno)musicologists, cultural studies scholars, musicians, and anyone interested in the intersection of law and music.