Ed Sheeran’s copyright scandal

Probably one of the most common copyright scandals come from music. On one hand, there are only 7 notes, on the other – musicians come up with new compositions every day. However, often they use combinations of notes and chords already invented by someone earlier.   

Let’s look at an example:
A famous musician Ed Sheeran has been accused of plagiarism several times. His track “Thinking Out Loud” is so similar to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. However, experts said that the most similar parts – the sequence of chords and using instruments are not protected by copyright, and perhaps Ed was just inspired by Gay’s work.    
Nonetheless Ed was being sued by two different parties: Ed Townsend’s estate (co-writer of “Let’s Get It On”) and Structured Asset Sales, who own a part of Gaye’s song. The amount of the claim was $ 100 million. Such a large sum of a lawsuit was because the song “Thinking Out Loud” reached number one rank in the UK chart and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100.  The album has sold over 15 million copies.
As a result the musicians reached an out of court agreement, on which any specific payments remain unknown.

Doesn`t matter – if you are already a well-known artist, or just a beginner – you can avoid such issues with copyright protection. Moreover, scandals in music industry are about image – don`t you want to protect yours? You can read how to register a copyright in other articles on udiar.net.

Picture: krot.info