About
“As an academic (Berklee College of Music, USA) Joe’s primary area of research expertise is the psychology of songwriting, and similarity thresholds in popular songs. His PhD research provided the world’s first detailed systematic investigation into collaborative songwriting.”
Dr Joe Bennett has been analysing and transcribing popular music for international publication since 1994. He has written 30 books, including transcription, teaching and reference works (published worldwide by Music Sales Group), and more than 300 academic and media articles, relating to song analysis, guitar techniques, music similarity, music copyright law, and songwriting. He is currently a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston USA, and the resident musicologist for BBC Radio in the UK and internationally.
As an academic Joe’s primary area of research expertise is the psychology of songwriting and similarity thresholds in popular songs. His PhD research (University of Surrey, UK) was entitled ‘Constraint, Creativity, Copyright and Collaboration in Popular Songwriting Teams’, and it provided the world’s first detailed systematic investigation into collaborative songwriters’ creative processes. Joe was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) in 2004 by the UK Higher Education Academy in recognition of his contribution to the teaching and learning of popular music. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the American Musicological Society, a peer reviewer for Bloomsbury, OUP and IASPM, and a PhD examiner specializing in songwriting creativity. Prior to his current role, he was Vice President of Academic Affairs at Berklee, and formerly Dean at Boston Conservatory (USA) and Bath Spa University (UK).
As a forensic musicologist, Joe’s past clients include Universal Music Publishing, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, Netflix, Loeb & Loeb LLP, Simpson & Marwick LLP, Michael Simkins LLP, Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP, Swan Turton LLP, Van Straten solicitors, Ministry of Sound, JWT, and BBH, confidential corporate clients, and many individual songwriters. Recent US litigation includes Hines v. W Chappell Music Corp. (S.D.N.Y. 2021), Third Side Music, Inc. v. Evenflo Co., Inc. (Ohio 2023), Payne v. Woods (La. 2023), Browne v. Donalds (C.D. Cal. 2023), Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC v. West et al. (C.D. Cal. 2024), and Hernandez v. Giraldo Navarro et al. (S.D. Fla. 2026). Media interviews include Rolling Stone, Washington Post, CNN, The Daily Telegraph, NPR, The New York Times, Billboard, The LA Times, BBC TV news, BBC TV The One Show, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, MTV news, Discovery Channel and The Guardian.
