A Florida-based corporation sued Bad Bunny and collaborators for the unauthorized use of three songs known as Playero Works on their 2020 hit Safaera.
AOM Music, Inc. filed the lawsuit last week in court in California, alleging direct and collective copyright infringement.
According to the lawsuit, the action for violation arises from the use of three copyrighted musical works and “the unauthorized incorporation of the Playero Works defendants into the hit song Safaera, for which no license or authorization was obtained.”
The lawsuit seeks damages of up to $ 150,000 per infringement, the prohibition of continued copyright infringement by the Playero Works, and the payment of the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
The document names Bad Bunny and the musicians Tainy, Randy, Jowell, Ñengo Flow and DJ Orma as defendants, as well as the companies Rimas Entertainment LLC, CDA Music Group Inc., DJ Negro Publishing, EMI Blackwood Music Inc., Songs of Universal, Inc., Risamar Publishing, The Royalty Network, Inc., Teynor Music and Universal Songs of Polygram International Inc.
Safaera emerges from the second studio album by the Puerto Rican star entitled YHLQMDLG, which in 2020 was the best-selling Latin music album in the United States and the most played globally on Spotify, and which ended up winning the Grammy for best Latin music album pop or urban.
According to the lawsuit, the song has been described as “a five-minute homage to DJ Playero’s mixtapes that defined a genre in the 1990s” and “a journey into DJ Playero’s underground style, complete with samples cut and stuck ”.
As an example, citing an article from music journal Pitchfork, he says it includes at least eight rhythm changes, five rap flows, and more than 10 years of references. Samplea, among others, the tumbi (one-stringed instrument) from Missy Elliott‘s Get Ur Freak On; the bass line from Bob Marley‘s Could You Be Loved; DJ Nelson’s siren synthesizers and DJ Goldy’s Xtassy Reggae tape; the opening line of Pa ’ la pared of Cosculluela with Jowell & Randy and a sample of El Tiburon by Alexis and Fido.
The document establishes that the plaintiffs believe that the defendants were aware of the need to obtain licenses for the use of third-party works in Safaera and that this is “demonstrated by the fact that, for example … Missy Elliot is recognized as (co ) author of Safaera due to the sampling of her hit song Get Ur Freak On ”.
In fact, the document continues, Safaera was briefly removed from Spotify on May 14, 2020 due to the defendants not removing a sample of the song and reinstating it on the digital music service after obtaining such authorization.
