This Miley Cyrus copyright infringement suit is…wow.
Last year, Miley Cyrus had a massive hit with the song “Flowers.” It’s been streamed more than 2.2 billion times and the view is approaching one billion views on YouTube. It’s been a monster moneymaker.
But now all that is under threat from a company called Tempo, one of the organizations buying song catalogues. In this case, Tempo owns a piece of the Bruno Mars song “When I Was Your Man.” Tempo alleges that “Flower” ripped off “When I Was Your Man” and wants someone–actually a lot of people–to pay them for the fraction of the song they own (they bought a piece from songwriter Philip Lawerence).
Not only is Tempo suing Cyrus for copyright infringement, the suit also names:
- Cyrus’ co-writers
- Sony Music Entertainment
- Several music publishers (Concord, Warner-Tamerlane, MCEO)
- Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart, which all sold the song in-store or online.
- Live Nation (for its part in hosting Miley Cyrus’ store)
- Disney (for releasing a concert documentary that features the song)
- And a group of streaming music services. Hold on to that thought.
Tempo says that “Flowers” violates “When I Was Your Man” by duplicating “numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements.” Let’s compare. Pay attention to “the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, certain bars of the chorus, certain theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions.”
That’s a lot of defendants. And it’s an interesting choice of targets, especially the last one group.
Tempo is going after Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Qobuz, SoundCloud, and Tidal for hosting/streaming the song. Suing DSPs just for streaming the song? Wow. That’s…extreme.
Interesting point, though: Neither Spotify nor YouTube are mentioned in the suit.
This will be another weird one.
It must be impossible to come up with something truly unique anymore. Though I can hear a slight similarity, I think there are far greater similarities between Flowers and I Will Survive. Are they (whoever owns the rights to that song) suing too? Wonder how Bruno Mars feels about this (given, you know, Blurred Lines and all). Regardless, Flowers is a catchy song, and I like it as much (though not more than) I Will Survive.
Whoops, my bad, ignore that second point, it was Pharrell and Robin Thicke who penned Blurred Lines! I stand by my point on I Will Survive, though…