I Had a Premonition That We Fell Into a Rhythm
March 11, 2022 9:43 AM Subscribe
Also covered on "Rich and Daily" podcast, with sound clips.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:45 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:45 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not a lawyer, either, but it's clearly a cash-grab.
posted by kfholy at 10:46 AM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by kfholy at 10:46 AM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Adam Neely is a treasure.
posted by signal at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by signal at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2022 [14 favorites]
Rick Beato also covered this and adjusted the tempo and compression. "It is very hard to get copyright lawyers willing to go up against these big artists. - A lot of people are commenting that this is a copy of the Outkast song Rosa Parks. That doesn’t matter. The lawsuit is apparently between Artikal Sound System and Dua Lipa. In court, they would never be able to talk about the Outkast song. That would have no bearing on the case. Even if they both stole it. It wouldn’t matter if OutKast copied it from someone else. I don’t personally care about either song. They are both clichéd Pop songs."
posted by Lanark at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
thanks for reminding me i need to go blast some 'Kast from my recently added car subwoofer
posted by glonous keming at 11:06 AM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 11:06 AM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm reminded of a very old musician's joke, that if Johann Pachelbel ever hears Percy Sledge singing When A Man Love A Woman, he's gonna be pissed.
posted by mhoye at 11:12 AM on March 11, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 11:12 AM on March 11, 2022 [16 favorites]
I can see the similarities, but the development of “Levitating” seems pretty documented. It seems even less than a cash grab than a publicity stunt. I never heard of the other group before this, and did seek them out and gave it a listen.
posted by MrGuilt at 11:12 AM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by MrGuilt at 11:12 AM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
I had always heard that the trick to levitating is to just Dua Lipa and not come back down.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:23 AM on March 11, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:23 AM on March 11, 2022 [23 favorites]
Always an issue in hit music. Always remember Timbaland ripping off a Swedish chiptune artist for a Nelly Furtado song. I've been listening to Tory Lanez's new album Alone at Prom and he basically "samples" entire hit 80's songs and sings over them. How they can do it without getting clearance always shocks me.
posted by packfan88c at 11:29 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by packfan88c at 11:29 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I saw the Rick Beato video linked above several days ago. The fact that the Artikal song was a big hit on the Reggae charts is really telling. It's not like the Artikal song was obscure... certainly more than one of the Dua Lipa team of song-making-crew would have heard the tune, probably more than a few times. The songs are nearly identical. My guess is they'll settle out of court and no one will remember this a year from now.
I want to add that Rick Beato has a great channel, well worth checking out. He's charismatic, knows his stuff and is almost entirely positive and upbeat about all kinds of music. He's not a music snob. A lot of the music theory goes way, way over my head, but his many of his videos are interesting and worth checking out.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:39 AM on March 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
I want to add that Rick Beato has a great channel, well worth checking out. He's charismatic, knows his stuff and is almost entirely positive and upbeat about all kinds of music. He's not a music snob. A lot of the music theory goes way, way over my head, but his many of his videos are interesting and worth checking out.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:39 AM on March 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
Speaking as someone who creates music, I agree with Rick Beato that the likelihood of this being entirely an coincidence is low, and the court will probably see it as infringement.
But also speaking at someone who creates music, I agree with Adam Neely that the Charleston V-IV-IV cadence is incredibly cliche and Artikal Sound System shouldn't win the case.
posted by tclark at 11:41 AM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
But also speaking at someone who creates music, I agree with Adam Neely that the Charleston V-IV-IV cadence is incredibly cliche and Artikal Sound System shouldn't win the case.
posted by tclark at 11:41 AM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
I saw this a couple of days ago, and I think the algorithm suggested this video as a followup to Adam's video, and it's a fascinating deep dive into the history of Eric Prydz' Call On Me by way of Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk and DJ Falcon.
posted by Kyol at 11:46 AM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Kyol at 11:46 AM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
I've been listening to Tory Lanez's new album Alone at Prom and he basically "samples" entire hit 80's songs and sings over them. How they can do it without getting clearance always shocks me.
For a high profile release they almost certainly did get clearance! Well, they may be interpolating i.e. having somebody replay the “samples” - which requires permission to use the composition but not the separate permission to use the recording itself.
posted by atoxyl at 12:55 PM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
For a high profile release they almost certainly did get clearance! Well, they may be interpolating i.e. having somebody replay the “samples” - which requires permission to use the composition but not the separate permission to use the recording itself.
posted by atoxyl at 12:55 PM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yeah, that's covered in the video I linked, and it's sort of fascinating. There are labels who exist to have stars perform what amounts to high-brow karaoke of their original hits, but free of their original record company's licensing department.
I mean, assuming they have copyright on the song, versus the recording's copyright, which maybe, maybe not.
posted by Kyol at 1:04 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I mean, assuming they have copyright on the song, versus the recording's copyright, which maybe, maybe not.
posted by Kyol at 1:04 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The fact that the Artikal song was a big hit on the Reggae charts is really telling. It's not like the Artikal song was obscure
Uh, yes it was obscure. Did you watch the first linked video? The EP containing "Live Your Life" charted #2 on the Billboard reggae album charts for the week of April 22, 2017, and that was it. It was hardly a song that made it into the pop music zeitgeist of 2017. Moreover, it was also virtually impossible to find the song anywhere online prior to commencement of the lawsuit, which seems highly unlikely for a noteworthy single from as recently as 2017. It is orders of magnitude more likely that the songwriters had familiarity with the Outkast single than the Artikal single. More to the point, it's clear that the chord progression, rhythm and melody (although I hesitate to call something that is almost entirely one note a "melody") are ubiquitous -- not only in and of themselves, but in the specific combination at issue. It will be quite easy for the songwriters' attorneys to demonstrate spontaneous composition and to assert that the claimed elements are so much a part of the general musical landscape that Artikal can't claim ownership of the IP (indeed, the very existence of Outkast's song would appear to negate any claim Artikal might have to original authorship). I think the songwriters' attorneys could also argue that the arrangement, production and sonics are the important part, not the chord progression and "melody." There's no doubt that the Outkast, Artikal and Dua Lipa records sound quite different in terms of arrangement, production and sonics, which is something Beato notes in his video. The bar is pretty high for this kind of claim, and I have a hard time seeing Artikal prevailing on this claim.
posted by slkinsey at 1:38 PM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Uh, yes it was obscure. Did you watch the first linked video? The EP containing "Live Your Life" charted #2 on the Billboard reggae album charts for the week of April 22, 2017, and that was it. It was hardly a song that made it into the pop music zeitgeist of 2017. Moreover, it was also virtually impossible to find the song anywhere online prior to commencement of the lawsuit, which seems highly unlikely for a noteworthy single from as recently as 2017. It is orders of magnitude more likely that the songwriters had familiarity with the Outkast single than the Artikal single. More to the point, it's clear that the chord progression, rhythm and melody (although I hesitate to call something that is almost entirely one note a "melody") are ubiquitous -- not only in and of themselves, but in the specific combination at issue. It will be quite easy for the songwriters' attorneys to demonstrate spontaneous composition and to assert that the claimed elements are so much a part of the general musical landscape that Artikal can't claim ownership of the IP (indeed, the very existence of Outkast's song would appear to negate any claim Artikal might have to original authorship). I think the songwriters' attorneys could also argue that the arrangement, production and sonics are the important part, not the chord progression and "melody." There's no doubt that the Outkast, Artikal and Dua Lipa records sound quite different in terms of arrangement, production and sonics, which is something Beato notes in his video. The bar is pretty high for this kind of claim, and I have a hard time seeing Artikal prevailing on this claim.
posted by slkinsey at 1:38 PM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
The EP containing "Live Your Life" charted #2 on the Billboard reggae album charts for the week of April 22, 2017, and that was it.
This doesn't point to it being obscure. Plenty of popular bands don't chart at all. Also, music writers/producers/etc are not the general public - they listen to boatloads more music and therefore more obscure music.
Also the article doesn't say that it was 'hard to find' prior to the commencement of the lawsuit, just that it was not currently on any of the streaming services. If you google, some very famous albums are not on streaming services, so not being on them is notable but not damning.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:05 PM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
This doesn't point to it being obscure. Plenty of popular bands don't chart at all. Also, music writers/producers/etc are not the general public - they listen to boatloads more music and therefore more obscure music.
Also the article doesn't say that it was 'hard to find' prior to the commencement of the lawsuit, just that it was not currently on any of the streaming services. If you google, some very famous albums are not on streaming services, so not being on them is notable but not damning.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:05 PM on March 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
I love Adam Neeley, but I gotta say that I kinda disagree with him on this one. His musical analysis is perfectly cogent, but it gets lost in the woods if the technicalities of the structure, and misses the simple fact that the hook from the Dua Lipa song and the Artikal Sound System one sound nearly identical in a way that isn't true when comparing either of them to the Outkast track (which sounds similar and its clearly using some of the same tropes, but it's more like retelling of a story and less like a photocopy). There is just an immediate, obvious total aesthetic similarity that goes beyond choice of harmony, melody, phrasing (none of which is original to either).
posted by Dysk at 2:15 PM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:15 PM on March 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
I mean, assuming they have copyright on the song, versus the recording's copyright, which maybe, maybe not.
Most of the time, as far as I know, the songwriter(s) will own the copyright on a song - the “publishing” rights - or at least a significant chunk. The record label almost always has the rights to the recording off the bat because that’s (traditionally) their whole business. Sometimes artists eventually are able to get that, too (“owning their masters”) but usually only after a long time/having a lot of clout, unless their deal with the label was primarily just a distribution thing from the beginning.
posted by atoxyl at 2:41 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Most of the time, as far as I know, the songwriter(s) will own the copyright on a song - the “publishing” rights - or at least a significant chunk. The record label almost always has the rights to the recording off the bat because that’s (traditionally) their whole business. Sometimes artists eventually are able to get that, too (“owning their masters”) but usually only after a long time/having a lot of clout, unless their deal with the label was primarily just a distribution thing from the beginning.
posted by atoxyl at 2:41 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
but it gets lost in the woods if the technicalities of the structure
The thing is, production style is not as strongly protected/defined when it comes to copyright, though that's the very thing that listeners "hear" almost above all else. That is almost certainly a historical artifact that may no longer be useful in the modern era, but the technicalities of the structure (basically the lyrics and how the song is written down in musical notation) are the very things that have the clearest/strongest protection when it comes to copyright. Production style gets much, much wider latitude.
posted by tclark at 3:00 PM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
The thing is, production style is not as strongly protected/defined when it comes to copyright, though that's the very thing that listeners "hear" almost above all else. That is almost certainly a historical artifact that may no longer be useful in the modern era, but the technicalities of the structure (basically the lyrics and how the song is written down in musical notation) are the very things that have the clearest/strongest protection when it comes to copyright. Production style gets much, much wider latitude.
posted by tclark at 3:00 PM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
Not the first time this happened with Dua Lipa, although in that case they did end up with a writing credit.
posted by hoyle at 3:12 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hoyle at 3:12 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
if Johann Pachelbel ever hears Percy Sledge singing When A Man Love A Woman, he's gonna be pissed
It's way more than just Percy Sledge...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:03 PM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's way more than just Percy Sledge...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:03 PM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Towards the end Adam Neely mentions in passing the infamous 'Blurred Lines' lawsuit, which was more debatable, and involved plenty of money changing hands with lawyers presenting fuzzy musicology to impressionable juries.
Back in simpler times, Gordon Lightfoot vs Whitney Houston's composer was settled out of court with an apology. Before that George Harrison...
posted by ovvl at 5:00 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Back in simpler times, Gordon Lightfoot vs Whitney Houston's composer was settled out of court with an apology. Before that George Harrison...
posted by ovvl at 5:00 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The thing is, production style is not as strongly protected/defined when it comes to copyright, though that's the very thing that listeners "hear" almost above all else.
Yeah, I think Neeley speaks like he's talking in generalities when you may well be right, he's speaking to the legal side specifically. He does come across like those are his actual opinions though, not just a "well this is what I would say in court, buuut..."
posted by Dysk at 9:43 PM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think Neeley speaks like he's talking in generalities when you may well be right, he's speaking to the legal side specifically. He does come across like those are his actual opinions though, not just a "well this is what I would say in court, buuut..."
posted by Dysk at 9:43 PM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Other Adam Neely videos on "did X copy Y?":
Olivia Rodrigo's "good 4 u" and Paramore's "Misery Business"
Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" and Flame's "Joyful Noise" (he also appears in the Legal Eagle video about this case)
The Olivia Rodrigo/Paramore video digs a little further into the whole "does sounding alike meet the legal standard for musical plagiarism?" thing.
posted by chrominance at 12:46 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Olivia Rodrigo's "good 4 u" and Paramore's "Misery Business"
Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" and Flame's "Joyful Noise" (he also appears in the Legal Eagle video about this case)
The Olivia Rodrigo/Paramore video digs a little further into the whole "does sounding alike meet the legal standard for musical plagiarism?" thing.
posted by chrominance at 12:46 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
"In court, they would never be able to talk about the Outkast song. That would have no bearing on the case."
Beato seems a pleasant enough chap, and he knows plenty about music theory, but he's always struck me as somewhat more engaging than insightful, and rather overconfident in making simple pronouncements about things whose complexity he does not appreciate.
But more relevant than my opinions is that Beato is (a) neither an IP lawyer nor a forensic musicologist and (b) flat wrong about this. Here, an actual IP lawyer makes clear that "prior art", while not strictly a part of copyright law, is conceptually close enough for jazz. Beato is wrong for two main reasons, as far as I can see. Firstly, which parts of a copyright work are protected depends on their distinctiveness. You cannot identify the unique creative parts of a work without considering the context, including past musical works. Secondly, the popular success of Rosa Parks makes it much harder to argue that the composers of Levitating must have heard Live Your Life, when it's more likely that they just accidentally nicked an obviously appealling (and accordingly common) application of certain foundational parts of the subgenre they're all working in. Proving a lack of originality isn't enough: you have to demonstrate actual copying.
I'm not sure that a musician with even a basic awareness of the genre's standards and conventions could meaningfully plagiarise a song as derivative as Live Your Life, at least not to any profit: it seems to me that, after excluding everything too derivative or abstract to be protected, there is simply nothing left, at least nothing worth stealing.
I will issue my standard disclaimer that the very notion of intellectual property is an absurd and abhorrent one: rights are not property and only those who would be slaveowners benefit from treating them as such.
posted by howfar at 4:56 AM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Beato seems a pleasant enough chap, and he knows plenty about music theory, but he's always struck me as somewhat more engaging than insightful, and rather overconfident in making simple pronouncements about things whose complexity he does not appreciate.
But more relevant than my opinions is that Beato is (a) neither an IP lawyer nor a forensic musicologist and (b) flat wrong about this. Here, an actual IP lawyer makes clear that "prior art", while not strictly a part of copyright law, is conceptually close enough for jazz. Beato is wrong for two main reasons, as far as I can see. Firstly, which parts of a copyright work are protected depends on their distinctiveness. You cannot identify the unique creative parts of a work without considering the context, including past musical works. Secondly, the popular success of Rosa Parks makes it much harder to argue that the composers of Levitating must have heard Live Your Life, when it's more likely that they just accidentally nicked an obviously appealling (and accordingly common) application of certain foundational parts of the subgenre they're all working in. Proving a lack of originality isn't enough: you have to demonstrate actual copying.
I'm not sure that a musician with even a basic awareness of the genre's standards and conventions could meaningfully plagiarise a song as derivative as Live Your Life, at least not to any profit: it seems to me that, after excluding everything too derivative or abstract to be protected, there is simply nothing left, at least nothing worth stealing.
I will issue my standard disclaimer that the very notion of intellectual property is an absurd and abhorrent one: rights are not property and only those who would be slaveowners benefit from treating them as such.
posted by howfar at 4:56 AM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also that ain't fucking reggae.
posted by howfar at 4:57 AM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by howfar at 4:57 AM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Not sure if they talked about this specific example but Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding joined with The Verge's Nilay Patel Decoder podcast to discuss music copyright.
posted by mmascolino at 6:54 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mmascolino at 6:54 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
The notion that none of Dua Lipa's 67 (or whatever) member, multi-million dollar team of writers, producers, auto-tuners, focus-group conductors, taste-makers, influencers, social media gurus, managers, etc., were unaware of that #2 song on the Reggae charts is absurd. Their entire lives are based on listening to all kinds of music—especially pop music.
Also: in Beato's defense, he plainly states in that video multiple times that he is not an expert in the legal vagaries of this case or copyright law, and that he is merely stating his opinion based on years of being a professional musician and producer. It's a short video he made based on a story about pop music in the news. Sheesh.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:29 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also: in Beato's defense, he plainly states in that video multiple times that he is not an expert in the legal vagaries of this case or copyright law, and that he is merely stating his opinion based on years of being a professional musician and producer. It's a short video he made based on a story about pop music in the news. Sheesh.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:29 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wasn't the whole Apple Vs Microsoft intellectual property / copyright lawsuit (about the GUI Windows desktop being a ripoff of Mac OS) chucked due to Xeroxes prior art in that area? Not a lawyer, but I would imagine the same principle will hold; if both products are derivative of a prior song, it seems like there would be no standing for one of the artists of the derivative art to pursue another artist who has produced a song which is also derivative.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 8:40 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 8:40 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
The notion that none of Dua Lipa's 67 (or whatever) member, multi-million dollar team of writers, producers, auto-tuners, focus-group conductors, taste-makers, influencers, social media gurus, managers, etc., were unaware of that #2 song on the Reggae charts is absurd.
Sigh. “Live Your Life” was not the #2 song on the reggae chart — because there is no reggae chart for singles. It was among the six songs that were on Artikal’s “Smoke & Mirrors” EP that was #2 on the reggae album chart for the single week it charted. “Live Your Life” does not appear ever to have been released as a single, nor does it appear even to have been the lead track on the “Smoke & Mirrors” EP.
To establish that the Dua Lipa team appropriated copyrighted material from Artikal, you’d first have to establish that Artikal owned that IP (very unlikely due to the existence of prior art). Then you’d also have to imagine that at least one of Dua Lipa, Clarence Coffee Jr., Sarah Hudson and Stephen Kozmeniuk had sufficient familiarity with the third track on an American EP that reached #2 on the reggae charts for a single week some sixteen months earlier and that they had better familiarity with the Artikal track than Outkast’s much more widely known single “Rosa Parks” (that also happens to be in a much more closely related and relevant musical genre). Artikal’s allegation that “it is highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently from ‘Live Your Life‘“ is belied by the very existence of “Rosa Parks,’ which makes it clear that the Dua Lipa team could have appropriated from/been inspired by Outkast’s single with no knowledge of “Live Your Life” whatsoever. I don’t know what gives Beato the idea that they would never be able to bring up the Outkast single or that it would have no bearing on the lawsuit, because he is dead wrong about that.
posted by slkinsey at 11:23 AM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Sigh. “Live Your Life” was not the #2 song on the reggae chart — because there is no reggae chart for singles. It was among the six songs that were on Artikal’s “Smoke & Mirrors” EP that was #2 on the reggae album chart for the single week it charted. “Live Your Life” does not appear ever to have been released as a single, nor does it appear even to have been the lead track on the “Smoke & Mirrors” EP.
To establish that the Dua Lipa team appropriated copyrighted material from Artikal, you’d first have to establish that Artikal owned that IP (very unlikely due to the existence of prior art). Then you’d also have to imagine that at least one of Dua Lipa, Clarence Coffee Jr., Sarah Hudson and Stephen Kozmeniuk had sufficient familiarity with the third track on an American EP that reached #2 on the reggae charts for a single week some sixteen months earlier and that they had better familiarity with the Artikal track than Outkast’s much more widely known single “Rosa Parks” (that also happens to be in a much more closely related and relevant musical genre). Artikal’s allegation that “it is highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently from ‘Live Your Life‘“ is belied by the very existence of “Rosa Parks,’ which makes it clear that the Dua Lipa team could have appropriated from/been inspired by Outkast’s single with no knowledge of “Live Your Life” whatsoever. I don’t know what gives Beato the idea that they would never be able to bring up the Outkast single or that it would have no bearing on the lawsuit, because he is dead wrong about that.
posted by slkinsey at 11:23 AM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
I can't comment on the legal stuff, but I've been enjoying the album today, and a lot of those songs deliberately (IMO) evoke songs and styles. Like I bet you could identify songs on the album by what artist they sound like (might be a fun game: which one is the Lily Allen number?).
That's part of the art, and makes it more tricky - quotation, tribute, plagiarism. I also find it totally plausible that an English songwriter might be unaware of the number 2 song in the American reggae charts from a while ago.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 12:33 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's part of the art, and makes it more tricky - quotation, tribute, plagiarism. I also find it totally plausible that an English songwriter might be unaware of the number 2 song in the American reggae charts from a while ago.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 12:33 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Rockstar should sue the band for stealing the Grand Theft Auto Vice City game design for their album cover.
posted by jeremy b at 1:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jeremy b at 1:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sigh. “Live Your Life” was not the #2 song on the reggae chart — because there is no reggae chart for singles. It was among the six songs that were on Artikal’s “Smoke & Mirrors” EP that was #2 on the reggae album chart for the single week it charted. “Live Your Life” does not appear ever to have been released as a single, nor does it appear even to have been the lead track on the “Smoke & Mirrors” EP.
Just out of curiosity, I looked at what sort of business a #2 reggae album does in a week these days (note that Artikal dropped out of the top 15 the next week -- if you assume Zipf's law, which the article below backs up, the #2 album sells roughly 3.1x as many units as the #16 album).
Even 200-500K streams sounds like a lot; is it? As a comparison, I picked basically at random, Sade. Sade is a successful musician who has had a long career, but she* is nobody's idea of a current chart topper or stadium filler. Here's Sade's streaming data. Her #1 song, Smooth Operator, has 125 million streams on Spotify and another 100 million on YouTube. In fact it turns out that every.single.song Sade has ever put on album has over 1.1 million Spotify streams.
Can you sing "Fear" from Sade's sophomore album, Promise? Even just hum a few bars? Because that song has probably 4 or 5 times as many streams as "Live Your Life". And yes, it's an old track, but exactly how many Spotify streams did Sade get back when she was topping the charts in 1984?
If you want to insist that Dua Lipa's songwriting team must have been well aware of "Live Your Life", would you say that they must also be equally well aware of every single song Sade ever released on an album? Because those songs are much more famous than an album track on something that hit #2 on the reggae charts once. I expect songwriters listen to a lot of music but they're not omniscient.
* technically they - Sade albums are recorded by the band Sade, which happens to be fronted by the eponymous singer, but she has such a strong presence and role it makes more sense to say 'her' instead.
posted by Superilla at 12:20 AM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just out of curiosity, I looked at what sort of business a #2 reggae album does in a week these days (note that Artikal dropped out of the top 15 the next week -- if you assume Zipf's law, which the article below backs up, the #2 album sells roughly 3.1x as many units as the #16 album).
Masicka’s debut album 438 has landed at No. 2 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart with the second-best first-week sales among Dancehall albums in 2021. According to data provided to DancehallMag from MRC Data, Billboard’s sales tracker, the album’s total consumption during its first week of release from sales and streaming in the United States was 2,864 equivalent album units. This included 733 copies in pure album sales. The total consumption also included 400 in song sales, 2,781,700 from on-demand audio streams, and 123,400 from on-demand video streams. These figures are rounded to the nearest 100, according to an MRC Data representative.So we're talking something on the order of 3 million streams. Which sounds like a lot, although for a 6 song EP, that's 500K streams per song. In fact, for "Live Your Life", the third song on the album, it would be probably something like 200K or so, since the first track gets a disproportionate number of listens - if you listen to the first 30 seconds of something, then bail before the first chorus, congrats, you just streamed the first song.
Even 200-500K streams sounds like a lot; is it? As a comparison, I picked basically at random, Sade. Sade is a successful musician who has had a long career, but she* is nobody's idea of a current chart topper or stadium filler. Here's Sade's streaming data. Her #1 song, Smooth Operator, has 125 million streams on Spotify and another 100 million on YouTube. In fact it turns out that every.single.song Sade has ever put on album has over 1.1 million Spotify streams.
Can you sing "Fear" from Sade's sophomore album, Promise? Even just hum a few bars? Because that song has probably 4 or 5 times as many streams as "Live Your Life". And yes, it's an old track, but exactly how many Spotify streams did Sade get back when she was topping the charts in 1984?
If you want to insist that Dua Lipa's songwriting team must have been well aware of "Live Your Life", would you say that they must also be equally well aware of every single song Sade ever released on an album? Because those songs are much more famous than an album track on something that hit #2 on the reggae charts once. I expect songwriters listen to a lot of music but they're not omniscient.
* technically they - Sade albums are recorded by the band Sade, which happens to be fronted by the eponymous singer, but she has such a strong presence and role it makes more sense to say 'her' instead.
posted by Superilla at 12:20 AM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
Rick Beato and Adam Neely get together to talk about it.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:04 PM on March 20, 2022
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:04 PM on March 20, 2022
« Older SIster Bobbie, play Down Yonder | Winter Is Not Done with Us Yet, but... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by mhoye at 10:33 AM on March 11, 2022 [10 favorites]