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Dua Lipa Sued for Allegedly Ripping Off 'Levitating" from Reggae Band

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Why is it that whenever relatively unknown bands/artists want to file lawsuits against bigger acts for "ripping off" their unknown songs, they wait until the song is extremely popular and can give them a lot of money and attention?

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1 hour ago, Lynk said:

Why is it that whenever relatively unknown bands/artists want to file lawsuits against bigger acts for "ripping off" their unknown songs, they wait until the song is extremely popular and can give them a lot of money and attention?

It is a smart strategy and artists have the right to do it that way.  xtina11 

1 hour ago, GlenCoco said:

i guess the unknown group need to pay some bills 

Let's face it, if this band did it after Dua's song, everybody would agree that Dua was ripped off. eve1 

In this case, some people act like there is no similarity or they post stuff like "they need to pay bills", like they should be embarrassed for suing Dua.

I doubt you would be OK that some commercial artist ripped you off and became rich thanks to your hard work, while you get nothing.  Unknown band or not, this isn't fair. true1 

If artists want to sample or rework songs of other artists, they should credit them. 

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7 hours ago, SeekingThrill said:

 

Let's face it, if this band did it after Dua's song, everybody would agree that Dua was ripped off. eve1 

In this case, some people act like there is no similarity or they post stuff like "they need to pay bills", like they should be embarrassed for suing Dua.

I doubt you would be OK that some commercial artist ripped you off and became rich thanks to your hard work, while you get nothing.  Unknown band or not, this isn't fair. true1 

If artists want to sample or rework songs of other artists, they should credit them. 

The problem is that there is very, very, very little that's actually similar about the two songs. Beyond all of the broken down musical components that tweets above go into, the note arrangement that the two share (which only comprises of two notes total I might add) is far from an uncommon melodic arrangement. It exists in all forms of music from pop to classical. The melody to Levitating is not a complicated one, it's very simple and uses a structure that's been a fixture of music for decades and decades. Lucky Star uses this same arrangement and also shares two notes of similarity with Levitating and this reggae song. But is Levitating or this song a rip off of Lucky Star? No. Is Lucky Star a rip off of the music before it that have played with this arrangement of notes? No. 

Plagiarism is not sharing a couple of notes or sharing a similar melodic construction. Plagiarism is directly lifting passages of a song without crediting be it a whole melody, lyrics, lyrical themes, etc. This Ragge group have zero legs to stand on, this is not plagiarism. If we're gonna be throwing out lawsuits for similarities with other songs, then they're on the chopping block for "plagiarizing" hundreds upon hundreds of artists and composers before them. 

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8 hours ago, SeekingThrill said:

It is a smart strategy and artists have the right to do it that way.  xtina11 

Let's face it, if this band did it after Dua's song, everybody would agree that Dua was ripped off. eve1 

In this case, some people act like there is no similarity or they post stuff like "they need to pay bills", like they should be embarrassed for suing Dua.

I doubt you would be OK that some commercial artist ripped you off and became rich thanks to your hard work, while you get nothing.  Unknown band or not, this isn't fair. true1 

If artists want to sample or rework songs of other artists, they should credit them. 

It's interesting to frame this as an artistic integrity thing instead of an obvious greed thing.

If you feel like your song has been stolen, the MOMENT you hear about it you would take action over it.

The song has been out damn near two years now, and has been a hit for at least half that time.

I won't even get into the music theory of why this case has no real legs (and yet, after rulings like Dark Horse and good 4 u, I can't even say this with certainty), but to act like it's anything other than greed is kinda disingenuous?

And obviously if it were the reverse, someone probably would've pointed this out simply because that's how exposure works. It's a massive song still in the public consciousness, if something similar (on a surface level, anyways) were to come out afterwards? Comparisons would be easily made.

But this is a group with sub-50k monthly listeners on spotify. Who reuploads of this song from TODAY have more views than anything else they've released due to the accusation. If it's not money they're after, it's exposure and they sure as hell got it.

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I think Dula Peep will lose true1 It sounds very similar. 

On 3/3/2022 at 5:22 AM, Lynk said:

Why is it that whenever relatively unknown bands/artists want to file lawsuits against bigger acts for "ripping off" their unknown songs, they wait until the song is extremely popular and can give them a lot of money and attention?

The unknown artist probably doesn't know the existence of the song before it got famous... not everyone listens to Dula Peep.

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3 hours ago, Shawn's Slave said:

I think Dula Peep will lose true1 It sounds very similar. 

The unknown artist probably doesn't know the existence of the song before it got famous... not everyone listens to Dula Peep.

1. She won't, they have no case. See my post above. 

2. Come on. Don't sit there and try to pretend that at the very least no one who is a fan of the group or knows them personally didn't hear Levitating somewhere at some point. That's incredibly obstuse. 

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1 hour ago, Mr. Mendes said:

1. She won't, they have no case. See my post above. 

2. Come on. Don't sit there and try to pretend that at the very least no one who is a fan of the group or knows them personally didn't hear Levitating somewhere at some point. That's incredibly obstuse. 

I think it goes beyond notes, it's the way the rhythms and beats is identical... I doubt dula peep ripped it off, but it still gives that impression. true1 I don't hear that much similarity between those two songs and Lucky Star, Lucky star is a bit slower and not as climatic. mad5

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Why is it that whenever relatively unknown bands/artists want to file lawsuits against bigger acts for "ripping off" their unknown songs, they wait until the song is extremely popular and can give the

The problem is that there is very, very, very little that's actually similar about the two songs. Beyond all of the broken down musical components that tweets above go into, the note arrangement that

It is a smart strategy and artists have the right to do it that way.    Let's face it, if this band did it after Dua's song, everybody would agree that Dua was ripped off.   In this case,


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