Dua Lipa wins copyright lawsuit over Levitating
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However, she is still facing a third legal challenge over the song, from musician Bosko Kante - a featured artist on Levitating, who sang vocals through a talk box.
That's a lot of legal challenges against one song. Wow.
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However, she is still facing a third legal challenge over the song, from musician Bosko Kante - a featured artist on Levitating, who sang vocals through a talk box.
That's a lot of legal challenges against one song. Wow.
Practically every single major pop music writer has faced a legal challenge. The more successful a song, the more people come out of the woodwork to cash in.
There are no new notes, no new chord progressions, no new rhythms, at least not in the mainstream. People love songs that sound vaguely like something else they already know, because those melodies and rhythms are associated with emotions already. So popular artists are constantly trying to make new songs that sound like songs people already like.
This is not a new phenomenon, and it's why music trends all seem to congeal around a singularity until people get sick of it. It happens in all genres, even experimental music like jazz, dubstep, and screamo, where people try to push the limits of taste and art. Eventually patterns emerge and find the repeating cycle of success, saturation, and surfeit.
And sometimes that works out for lawyers who want to get paid.
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She was previously sued by Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System, who claimed Lipa ripped off the chorus for her song from their 2015 track Live Your Life.
Their case was dropped in 2023 after a judge ruled there was no evidence that Lipa and her co-writers had "access" to the earlier song - a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
I never heard any of these and wasn't even sure which song Levitating was so I went and listened to all. The wiggle one, I agree with the judge. But the chorus sounds exactly like Live Your Life. Now that's a ripoff. What amazes me is that you can get away with this saying "no your honor I never heard of this song before and there is no evidence of me ever listening to it". That's outrageous. Especially in this day and age where you can listen to music from a million platforms and devices. It's on YouTube - can you make it more accessible than that??
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Practically every single major pop music writer has faced a legal challenge. The more successful a song, the more people come out of the woodwork to cash in.
There are no new notes, no new chord progressions, no new rhythms, at least not in the mainstream. People love songs that sound vaguely like something else they already know, because those melodies and rhythms are associated with emotions already. So popular artists are constantly trying to make new songs that sound like songs people already like.
This is not a new phenomenon, and it's why music trends all seem to congeal around a singularity until people get sick of it. It happens in all genres, even experimental music like jazz, dubstep, and screamo, where people try to push the limits of taste and art. Eventually patterns emerge and find the repeating cycle of success, saturation, and surfeit.
And sometimes that works out for lawyers who want to get paid.
What an excellent opportunity to post one of my favorite YouTube videos!
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She was previously sued by Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System, who claimed Lipa ripped off the chorus for her song from their 2015 track Live Your Life.
Their case was dropped in 2023 after a judge ruled there was no evidence that Lipa and her co-writers had "access" to the earlier song - a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
I never heard any of these and wasn't even sure which song Levitating was so I went and listened to all. The wiggle one, I agree with the judge. But the chorus sounds exactly like Live Your Life. Now that's a ripoff. What amazes me is that you can get away with this saying "no your honor I never heard of this song before and there is no evidence of me ever listening to it". That's outrageous. Especially in this day and age where you can listen to music from a million platforms and devices. It's on YouTube - can you make it more accessible than that??
Yeah, I didn't even know what Levitating was called (only heard it in commercials and stuff) and I immediately recognized what song it was from listening to Live Your Life. That's pretty damning.
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Without having listened to the other song (I know "Levitating" obviously)... this is definitely a good thing. There is only a limited amount of melodies that are possible to make and if "derivative work" is interpreted very broadly, at some point there won't be any way to make new songs.
https://archive.org/details/AllCreativeWorkIsDerivative
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/01/13/how-years-copyright-maximalism-is-now-killing-pop-music/
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All of her songs reminds me of 80s samples
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All of her songs reminds me of 80s samples
I think it's why I love her songs.
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She was previously sued by Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System, who claimed Lipa ripped off the chorus for her song from their 2015 track Live Your Life.
Their case was dropped in 2023 after a judge ruled there was no evidence that Lipa and her co-writers had "access" to the earlier song - a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
I never heard any of these and wasn't even sure which song Levitating was so I went and listened to all. The wiggle one, I agree with the judge. But the chorus sounds exactly like Live Your Life. Now that's a ripoff. What amazes me is that you can get away with this saying "no your honor I never heard of this song before and there is no evidence of me ever listening to it". That's outrageous. Especially in this day and age where you can listen to music from a million platforms and devices. It's on YouTube - can you make it more accessible than that??
Also maybe if it was just her. But big artists like her write their music with a huge team. In this case:
- Dua Lipa
- Clarence Coffee Jr
- Sarah Hudson
- Stephen Kozmeniuk, known professionally as Koz
- Jonathan Lyndale known professionally as DaBaby
Are all listed as songwriters on this track, so the idea that nobody involved had heard Live Your Life is pretty unlikely
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Yeah, I didn't even know what Levitating was called (only heard it in commercials and stuff) and I immediately recognized what song it was from listening to Live Your Life. That's pretty damning.
Wow 100% that was lifted; and not the first time either. When I heard Levitating around I already knew it was a “remix” of something else I’d heard before.
Sorry no way no one on that writing team knew.
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It’s still pretty fucking bold to act like Artikal’s was some kind of fuckin’ unique masterpiece. Absolutely they sound pretty damn on the nose for just that chorus but holy crap, it’s not Dua Lipa’s fault(or whoever wrote the song) she took that lazy chorus idea and made it far better(and yes, I also think Levitating isn’t exactly a masterpiece either). Anyone who’s played an instrument with any amount of skill will come up with that rhythm and progression on their own at some point.
I don’t wanna be out here defending celebrities but from a musical creativity standpoint they may as well be suing because she used the same time signature.
Note: I couldn’t even find “Live Your Life” on Apple Music, only Youtube, and typing in just “Live Your Life” without the band name shows a, frankly awful, T.I./Rhianna song.
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Reminder: World is a US Internal News free zone. You want [email protected] or !politics
If it only involves the US, it does not belong here.
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