Daddy Yankee, the Black Eyed Peas, and Sony Music are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit after allegedly sampling a song from 2022’s “Bailar Contigo” without authorization.
Iceberg Records, a part of Denmark’s 42-year-old music corporation, recently filed the basic complaint in a California federal court. The tightly phrased action revolves around the 1994 dance hit “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop).”
The much-streamed song, recorded and co-written by Scatman John, who died in 1999, belongs to the plaintiff label on the master side; according to the lawsuit, Iceberg also owns 50 percent of the work’s publishing rights. Prior to the release of the Black Eyed Peas’ Elevation in mid-November 2022, the plaintiff and defendants are alleged to have reached an agreement for the use of the underlying “Scatman” composition within “Bailar Contigo.”
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The latter single, which features the aforementioned Daddy Yankee, is Elevation’s fifth and has received just shy of 70 million Spotify streams. “‘We hereby agree to the use of extracts from the composition,'” the applicable agreement reads in part, with the plaintiff also receiving a 75 percent compositional stake and a five percent master income interest in “Bailar Contigo,” according to the lawsuit.
Predictably, given the lawsuit, the plaintiff, citing supposed similarities discovered after a comparison, claims that the defendants incorporated the “Scatman” master into “Bailar Contigo.”
“Although it appears that Defendants attempted to manipulate the sound recording slightly to hide their infringement,” Iceberg said in her letter, “the work remains so strikingly similar to the Song that it could not have been created without using the Song’s sound recording.”
The defendants, as the filing party pointed out, “simply lied” about not using the tape in order “to avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
Iceberg is suing for direct and contributory infringement, as well as fraud, demanding damages, attorneys’ costs, and other compensation. Digital Music News contacted Sony Music for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication; Iceberg founder and owner Manfred Zähringer said he had “no comments presently.”
Last month, a federal judge rejected with prejudice a years-old copyright complaint against Roddy Ricch for his 2019 hit “The Box.” According to the Supreme Court, “no reasonable jury could find that the works are substantially similar.”
In January, Sony Music, Travis Scott, Metro Boomin, and others were served with a separate sample-focused copyright infringement lawsuit, this time targeting the alleged unlawful appearance of “Bitches (Reply)” in 32-year-old Scott’s “Stargazing” and “Til Further Notice.”
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