Is the latest pop plagiarism scandal going to engulf Justin Bieber? No, it is not. Well, it seems not anyway: an accusation from another artist, Asher Monroe, that Bieber’s ‘Running Over’ nicked one of his hooks has turned out to have an interesting explanation.
The Verge’s Dani Deahl has done the digging: “It turned out no one stole anything because the melody isn’t by either artist. It’s a royalty-free sample by producer Laxcity that can be purchased from online sounds marketplace Splice,” she reported. “So, although both songs use the same melodic sample, no one is copying anyone. In fact, the sample could be used in every song that appears on the radio with no consequence, so long as the artists obtained it from Splice.”
In a way, it’s surprising that this hasn’t happened more often, given Splice’s popularity: it announced earlier this month that it has paid out more than $25m to sample creators, and a year ago more than 2.5 million musicians and producers were using it.
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It’s bound to happen especially if people are using the loops ‘as is’