Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee have been sued over a sample in their 2022 track 'Bailar Contigo'. Turns out they'd secured the rights to interpolate Scatman John's 'Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)' into their composition, but not to sample the original track. But sample the original track they did. Or so reckons the label that owns the master rights in the Scatman John hit, Iceberg Records.
"This is a clear-cut copyright infringement case", says the label in its lawsuit, filed with the courts in California. It “granted defendants a limited licence to use the musical composition for the song in their hit single 'Bailar Contigo'”, it adds, and was assured “that the master would not be used".
Where an artist actually samples an earlier recording in a new track, two licences are required, one covering the copyright in the recording and another covering the copyright in the song contained in the recording. However, if the artist only interpolates the earlier work, creating a new recording that employs key and substantial elements of the earlier song, then just a licence covering the song rights is required.
Iceberg Records actually has an interest in both copyrights, owning the recording outright and having a 50% stake in the publishing rights in the song. That is why it was involved in negotiating the licence on the publishing side. Under that deal, Iceberg and the other publisher of 'Scatman' ended up with 75% of the publishing on 'Bailar Contigo', according to the lawsuit. Iceberg also got a 5% royalty on the 'Bailar Contigo' recording.
None of that gave Black Eyed Peas et al permission to actually sample the 'Scatman' recording, Iceberg insists. In fact, the label says, the licensing agents for Black Eyed Peas were "specifically advised by plaintiff that 'rights to the recording of the original (so called master rights) are not subject' to the parties’ licence agreement and 'require separate licensing'".
Of course, once an artist has licensed an interpolation on the publishing side, they can seek to make a new recording that is almost identical to the original. Providing they're careful about any sound-a-like vocals that might involve, which could result in a publicity rights case being filed by the original artist, as Rick Astley did in relation to Yung Gravy's 'Betty (Get Money)'.
So how is Iceberg Records sufficiently certain that Black Eyed Peas didn’t just make an almost identical version of the ‘Scatman’ composition? "After comparing the tracks", states the lawsuit, "it is apparent that the derivative work and the song are so strikingly similar that defendants have used the sound recording of the song, rather than just the composition, as agreed".
"Although it appears that defendants attempted to manipulate the sound recording slightly to hide their infringement", it goes on, "the work remains so strikingly similar to the song that it could not have been created without using the song’s sound recording. It became apparent that defendants simply lied to plaintiff about not using the sound recording in order to avoid paying a larger licensing fee".
It remains to be seen how Black Eyed Peas and their label Sony Music, also named as a co-defendant, respond. And if they deny that the original 'Scatman' recording was sampled, how Iceberg goes about proving that it was. Though they'll probably settle out of court and we'll never know. Which is no fun.