Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Dua Lipa "Levitating" infringement lawsuit
- Thread starter friskinator
- Start date
The other song I thing they both rip off is OutKast Rosa Parks. That melody is just the same in the chorus. At least in my head.
Thanks for the lawyering. I was just making the comment because someone said all of those elements were identical.
Maybe Rosa Parks by Outkast? That was what I was reminded of when I heard the Artikal song. The melody of the chorus sounds very similar to the intro and outro of Rosa Parks.
Edit: I was right!
Yeah i just beat you to it! If I was Dua Lipa I would just say that was who I stole it from and pay the money to The Dungeon Family.
They'd have slam dunk case if, for example, they corresponded with Stephen Kozmeniuk and sent him a demo. However, that's not required. The standard is that the alleged infringer had a "reasonable opportunity" to hear the piece. Since the Artikal track was made publicly available on Soundcloud 4 years ago, they've cleared that hurdle.
In contrast, if I wrote and recorded something that sounded exactly like the Lipa track 10 years ago and never released it anywhere, then I'm almost certainly out of luck.
You keep begging the question here, You're talking about a "money grab," while ignoring how that's the point of content. I can simply reply that it is Lipa, her producers, and her record label that are the greedy bastards that ripped off a small-time band and doesn't want to pay them. Neither your nor my characterization of the alleged motives does anything at all to evaluate the facts.
To put it another way: Your ad hominem attacks on Artikal does not prove your claims that "the songs aren't similar enough to merit a lawsuit."
Since what you described above isn't a valid justification, you're going to have to figure out some more reasons.
The only one I can think of is that the bar for successful copyright infringement is much higher than you recognize. The similarities need to be strong enough not just to bring a lawsuit, but to potentially face off against a wealthy artist and an even more wealthy record label in court. Between Artikal and Lipa, who do you think has more resources to hire lawyers and musicologists to make their case...?
Wow. Do you really think that every song in existence is made up of a maximum of 4 chords?
Here's the chord progression for "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing." Feel free to identify the compositions Strayhorn cribbed.
B7#11 / B♭7♭13 / E♭7 / A♭7♭13 / D7 / D△7 / E♭7 / D△ / D6
E♭m7 / A♭7#5 / D♭△7 / Em7 / A7♭9 / D△7
G#ø7 / C#7#5 / D△7 / A♭7#11 / G7#11 / G♭△7 / A♭7#11
When you're done with that, you can work on "Captain Marvel" by Chick Corea; "Epistrophy" by Monk; "Countdown" by Coltrane; "Long Distance Runaround" by Yes; pretty much everything by Philip Glass... I could literally spend months identifying songs with unique progressions.
How about "Ahmid-6" by Metheny and Meldau? Just reading the chart makes my hands cramp.
Lemme toss you a softball with a pop tune. How about "Hello, Goodbye" by Lennon/McCartney?
lol... Yeah, not so much. Pony includes a 7; the melody isn't the same; the rhythms aren't very close. Go ahead, try to match the two in a DAW.
Better luck with the next one.
Similar vocal cadence to a snippet of the chorus and a pretty similar groove, but different key and different full melody
Well I said they were the "same", which would really only be the case in a direct sample I suppose- and "identical" would be like a cover performed with all the same building blocks (including lyrics). Fundamentally they are pretty damn close in most parameters though, which is why a mere tempo shift can make them sound like parts of the same song in Beato's video. Given most of Lipa's recorded music is built with software/sample instruments it is quite possible it was even composed at a slower tempo like the Artikal song and sped up to align more with her disco tempos. At the same tempo the grooves, melody, vocal delivery, etc are directly interchangeable between the two
Last edited:
This is only true if Dua and the people involved in her song, knew about Artikal's song in advance, which again, is nearly impossible to prove. Quite literally impossible unless as you mention, someone in Artikal's circle has evidence that Dua was given a copy of the song, or has a copy. Anything else is speculation. I'm not claiming they didn't know of it - they may very well have - I'm claiming it cannot be proven except under very specific circumstance. Granted, absolute proof may not be necessary in copyright law, where (as I already mentioned) everything is subjective. But that kind of proves my point - that it is subjective. Based on perception and opinion, and not necessarily fact.
.
I'm not aware of any ad hominem in my comments. Other than the accusation of a money grab. My point here is again about subjectivity. I have already demonstrated that the two songs are not identical. This is easily proven beyond doubt. And once this is proven, we move again into the realm of subjectivity.
Agreed except, we're not talking about Chick Corea, Coltrane, Yes... And I did not claim that every song in existence is made up of a maximum of 4 chords. Not at all. Straw man. But I could write a song made of random chromatic notes that resembles more than one potential chord/inversion/key/progression/melody - from thousands of songs simultaneously, and according to copyright law as I understand you have described it, these are the only requirements. No proof beyond a reasonable doubt, just a subjective judgment by court officials and jurors who likely don't know the first thing about music theory and composition. I can't help but to repeat that in a room full of non-experts, it would be just as easy to demonstrate the differences as the similarities.
And to be clear, I do appreciate the discussion. I welcome your opinion and thoughts. I am okay if we disagree, and if I am completely wrong in the context of copyright law, that is fine too - my opinion is my opinion.
Last edited:
Somebody mentioned that this is a money grab. It damn sure is! Same as Blurred Lines. If the songs sucked, there would be no lawsuits.
The problem is they are not following the law. If it were all based on 'feel', then every disco song was a copy of every other disco song! There is no infringement on Reggae songs since they all have the reggae 'feel'. Here's one.....R&B song Watching You by Slave vs. Inside Out by Odyssey (Youtube them). Music IS identical but lyrics are different and melody is different. Yet no lawsuit. To me, this is all BS!
From the comments
True, but that could also be said for Tom Petty vs. Sam Smith or Ed Sheeran vs. TLC, and Petty and the writers of No Scrubs, got co-writing credits.
Are you saying you wouldn't want to get paid if your song was the one in question?
Again, direct proof that they heard the song makes for a stronger case, but is not required. E.g. Willie Dixon didn't need to prove that Led Zeppelin actually heard "You Need Love" when he sued Led Zeppelin for copying the song.
It should be obvious that allowing the defendant to say "I didn't hear that song before, I swear" is that it blows a gigantic loophole in copyright law. Hence the standard of a "striking" similarity.
Objectivity is an impossible standard in such matters, thus it is not applied. You can use empirical facts when making a case, but the borders are fuzzy, thus any determination will require a subjective judgement.
Let's hypothesize that someone writes a computer program that can objectively compare two scores, and determine the exact percentage of similarity. What percentage is "influence" and what percentage is "infringement?" Is it 25%? 50%? 90%? That's not an objective determination, it's a subjective one. If we agree it's 75%, then does that mean any song which is only 74% similar is safe, but one that is 76% is definitely an infringement?
That's why we leave it to the courts, which at gives both sides a forum to make their case, and have a disinterested jury of peers figure it out.
I had a feeling you'd scale back your sweeping claim
As noted, most of today's pop and country is so ridiculously simple and formulaic that overlap with existing songs is essentially guaranteed. That said, there's still new pop music that is different enough that they don't infringe existing copyrights, hence the relative dearth of lawsuits against massive pop hits.
Yes, you could use a random melody generator that, given enough cycles, produces a melody that already exists. That doesn't invalidate copyright law. I.e. you're vastly underestimating the variety of melodies available even to a 3-chord progression.
And yet, copyright lawsuits settled in court aren't lopsided in favor of plaintiffs. Hmmm
Anyway. It simply isn't possible to have a jury made up of experts finely tuned for every case. If a nuclear plant has an accident and the owners get sued for it, who should be on the jury? Nuclear plant designers engineers... who work at nuclear plants? Academic physicists who understand quantum mechanics, but don't know any of the specifics of running a plant? Not to mention that music copyright cases are certainly nowhere near complex, unique, important or frequent enough that we have to overhaul our legal system to accommodate those cases.
It's not a perfect system. No such perfect system exists, and if it did, it would be run by imperfect humans who would just screw up on occasion. The implications of your criticism -- that either no one should sue over copyright infringement, or only experts get to decide -- are not feasible.
Thus, you're stuck with either watching Lipa & co settle, or the matter being decided by a jury.
Nope. IMHO......it ain't the same song so I'd leave it alone. I grow tired of these 'song sounds similar' lawsuits.
