Again, there’s no question of plagiarism here. It’s copyright infringement.
To be found liable for copyright infringement one must have copied That means that independent creation is allowed.
But because of direct evidence of copying can be difficult to find, courts allow an inference of copying if you prove that the defendants had access to the work and that the allegedly infringing work is substantially similar to the plaintiff’s work.
It’s the plaintiff’s version to prove either copying or access and substantial similarity.
So no, no one is necessarily responsible for knowing every work in existence.
It would be wrong to label them as “plagiarists” because the court wasn’t considering any question of plagiarism. Indeed there is no federal action for plagiarism.
However, they were found liable for infringement. So it would be accurate to label them as “infringers.”
You can’t be liable for infringement without a finding that you did all the things that define infringement.
The person who wrote the music for “Dark Horse” either intentionally copied the beat and riff from “Joyful Noise”, or they did not. The reality of this truth is unknown to just about everyone except the person who penned those sections of the song, and I don’t pretend to know what actually happened.
If the beat and riff were intentionally copied and credit not given, then this is good news.
If the beat and riff were NOT intentionally copied, if they were independently written and just happened to be very similar, it is not good news for “songwriters”. A bunch of songwriters are now on the hook for damages to other people who had nothing to do with the creation of their song. These are songwriters who only got tagged for the similarity because the song they wrote was spectacularly successful. If this scenario is true, EVERY songwriter is at risk for their most popular songs to be subject to lawsuit, because they can unintentionally violate copyright, and that is NOT good news.
I’m curious about this because I wonder how much Juicy J really profited off this. If he got writing credit for his verse I guess he got royalties for that (and should he not, for words that he wrote and performed himself?), but a lot of times guest rappers (and ghost “producers”) and performers/musicians get a fee and very little if anything of the back end.
I seem to recall the “Blurred Lines” case assigning damages that seemed way out of line with the actual profits of performers in the digital age of streaming and Youtube comprising the bulk of “sales.”
So, I’m just wondering how much the guy 6th in line is going to have to pay for agreeing to be a guest on a single that sold a bunch of 99 cent downloads and comprised 1/13th or 1/16th of an album that sold about 4 million units worldwide.
IF you adjusted them for the same key (which is more fair to compare), “Dark Horse” would be:
C C C C
B B
A
E
Closer. The beat itself sounds like Joyful Noise ripping off a generic Southern rap snap-style beat. Nothing particularly new about that that I can tell. The only thing that gives me pause is the “yeah, y’all know what it is” at the start of the Katy Perry song and the “You know what it is” at the Christian rock song. That, to me, makes me doubt the claim that no one among the songwriting or production crew had heard the Flame song before.
Here’s Rick Beato’s well-reasoned take on the lawsuit. (He’s one of my favorite musical Youtubers; he’s got bona fides as a musician, producer, songwriter, and educator. Very even-handed and intelligent.)
Hah. This one literally just now showed up in my Youtube feed. Here it is for those interested. Most of those are closer than the similarities I hear in this particular lawsuit.
To me, there are three similar elements in the song: The base melody (in a similar key), the “y’all know what it is” at the start, and the male chorus going “whoop, whoop, whoop”.
In a world of infinite musical possibilities, chances of these three elements coinciding in two unrelated songs are staggeringly low. No, more like literally impossible.
The authors claiming that, at least one of them never heard of the original is nonsense. They practically sampled the thing and weren’t even trying to hide it. They were so clearly doing that, seems to me, somebody forgot to tell the label’s lawyers to contact Flame and tell him about it.
The melody for two bars is similar (not identical). Well, it’s actually not even the melody. It’s a synth riff underlying a rap in the one case. The rap doesn’t have a proper melody. Dark Horse does. You could go through every song released in the last 10 years and I doubt you could find a single one that doesn’t have two bars of its melody that are similar to at least one other song.
These two songs are less similar to each other than every song in the infamous “Pachabel rant” video is to every other song in that video.
I’m not a musician, I have no idea of bars or which notes are which or anything like that, but when I hear the base music for the Flame song, I absolutely recognize it as Dark Horse. I don’t think it’s any other Katy Perry song, or any other song from anybody else. I’m absolutely, 100% recognizing it as the intro for Dark Horse.
My bold. This is the problem. It’s a bit like accusing Ferrari of copying Lamborghini because they both make red cars and somebody who’s “not a car person” thinks they look the same.
If every song had to be completely unique and not sound anything like another song, the entire music industry would grind to a halt. Blues would have been still-born. There are only 12 notes, there are many ways they can be put together but the number of ways they can be put together and sound “musical” is relatively limited.
Absolutely. And that’s why if the only evidence is that there’s a similarly recognizable tune you could happily give Perry, Luke, Martin et al the benefit of the doubt.
But you pair this with the “Y’all know what it is” and the whoops, and the possibility of coincidence starts becoming really, really low.
When you google “Y’all know what it is” the first two results are two different songs with that title. Googling “Y’all know what it is” meaning comes up with two more songs with that lyric as the first results, neither song being Dark Horse or Joyful Noise. It seems to me that that phrase isn’t as unique as all that. :dubious: Cite.Cite 2.
Yes. But it doesn’t really need to be unique. It’s unique enough that only a small percent of songs have it.
Now, before you mention it, there’s also plenty of songs with guys screaming “whoop, whoop, whoop.”
And if the only thing in common between the two songs was either of these three elements, sure, there would be very little legal leeway here.
Two? A bit too coincidental. Way too coincidental, let’s be honest.
Three? Come on. No, seriously. Come on.
In a world of infinite musical possibilities, the chances of those three elements coinciding would be 1.0, as high as it is possible for a chance to get.
In the real world, the chances are some amount lower than that. How much lower? I dunno; do the math and tell me.