Source: http://vlaa.org/sampling-music-even-one-second-is-too-much/
On my long drive home over this past weekend, I wound up listening to a lot of NPR. The drive was over twelve hours long, and while I have a lot of music on my Spotify account, I’m not sure I have quite enough to last me for a twenty-four hour round trip. As I browsed through the different featured podcasts, I stumbled upon a program inspired by a TED talk on originality. Intrigued, I decided to give it a shot.
Credit: Taylor Swift and VEVO
The haters really are going to hate.
Taylor Swift has now found herself in a legal battle over her hit song of off her album 1989, “Shake It Off”. According to the BBC, Swift is being sued by American R&B singer Jesse Graham to the tune of $42 million. Additionally, Graham is suing for his name to be added as a co-writer on the song. He claims that the phrases “haters gone hate” and “playas gone play” are both copyrighted by him.
As many of you may already be aware, a landmark decision was made this past Tuesday when artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost a lawsuit to the estate of Marvin Gaye regarding copyright infringement. According to the verdict of the case, the hit song “Blurred Lines” was too similar to Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give it Up”. Thicke and Williams have been told to pay $7.3 million dollars in damages to Gaye’s estate. Right now, their lawyers have gone on the record to say that they are appealing this decision. Their appeal will be predominately based on the fact that jurors were instructed by the judge to only compare the sheet music between the two songs, a comparison that Thicke and William’s legal team believes does not encompass the true feel of both songs.
Here’s a mashup of the two songs in case you need some reference for comparison: