Ed Sheeran case

[Omegstrat6]

As most of us on here are of a certain age group I'm sure we can all think of quite a few songs that appear very similar to each other but the current escalation in suing people is getting daft now. I totally believe that the original artists should get credit if someone else has directly sampled or lifted their work or sections of it. For example, Madonna had to do a bit of fighting to get Benny & Bjorn to agree to her sampling "Gimme gimme " on "Hung up", Portugal the man could hardly not acknowledge their debt to "Please Mr Postman" and Sting got royalties for that riff sampled by Puff Daddy (much to the annoyance of Andy Summers who actually wrote it!). But some of the recent law suits are a bit farcical.

As the famed "Axis of awesome" you tube clip shows, so many pop songs use the same chord progressions just in maybe different keys or tempo and with a limited number of musical notes it's hardly a surprise. Certain genres -e.g. Blues-particularly recycle the same progressions. Because of this, my understanding is that you cannot claim ownership of a chord progression.

When you compare Sheeran's "Thinking out loud" to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it on", (the latter far better than the former IMHO) the similarities are obvious-even to the extent that Sheeran himself has done a mash up of the two-but whilst the chord progression in the verse is almost identical the melody is decidedly not. Admittedly, the "groove" of the verse (tempo/bass/drums ) is near identical but then lots of genres use the same styles (e.g. Country/reggae/soul etc) -it's what helps identify them as being part of that genre!

As long as the melody is different I think that to pursue such cases is the start of a slippery slope and more about greed than anything else. I do get that writers will often deliberately sneak in elements of existing successful popular songs into new ones because that familiarity helps acceptance but surely no music is entirely original and not influenced by what came before to varying degrees.

I know we're going to be focussed on tonight's game today but anyone else have an opinion on this?

[kettering_baggie]

It comes down to greed, there’s always someone who wants something for nothing. There are only twelve notes in music and some chord progressions have been used in so many songs that justifying a plagiarism claim must be very difficult. When I learned to play guitar, I was told that if I wanted to write a successful song (!) use I V vi IV (first, fifth, minor sixth, fourth), it works in any key and more hits have been written based on that progression than any other. Some of these plagiarism claims are ridiculous, as I said, comes down to the envy of greedy people.

[soulman101]

You need love Willie Dixon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T03WM3xtG24
Small faces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRXbi3pq7Y4
Robert Plant even does a cover of Stevie Marriot's vocal's , who was ist choice when Led Zepplin was formed

[boingy]

It depends who owns the original music as to whether they will even bother. Some producers are totally vindictive if you copy in the least any of their stuff. I tried to get a list because I write so much stuff just in case. Its really hard to know what is owned by who sometimes. After a death a lot of changes can be made.

[phild]

Ed Sheeran's 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud did not unlawfully copy from Marvin Gaye's classic 1973 song Let's Get It On, a jury in Manhattan as ruled. Mind ya theres plenty of songs these days that sound vaguely familiar to others except rap songs, which all sound exactly the same

[WBA1955]

Don't know anything about Ed Sheeran or the case.

[kettering_baggie]

Ed Sheeran seems a decent bloke, yesterday, I think, he was in Ipswich for the football celebration and he went into a local music shop and bought a guitar. A microphone was set up nearby and he gave an impromptu performance for the gathered crowd, then signed the guitar and gave it to a lad in the crowd!

[SCOOP115]

Don't know anything about Ed Sheeran or the case.

He uses the same hairdresser as Bozo Johnson and Worzel Gummidge

[boingy]

Copyright is a minefield. It is a protection but when you spend two whole days putting a video together making Frankenstein dance to one of your tracks for a video and you do your research and yes Frankenstein 1931 Public domain, good to go only to find that Universal take your video down because since they started to remake Frankenstein films they used the original Lon chaney style Frankenstein so NOW it’s copyrighted by Universal. My video was up for 10 seconds before it was taken down. Tired and nothing to show for it. Lol. But that’s how it is now. You just can’t be to sure.