Following up with my last article regarding music copyright, a massive lawsuit was initiated last year and has now moved forward against over 100 of “reggeaton” musicians, alleging copyright infringement of the instrumental percussion song “Fish Market” by Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson. This massive lawsuit has come to possibly affect one of the most influential latin-style music genre.

As per the original complaint, the drum pattern is: “a programmed kick, snare, and hi-hat playing a one bar pattern; percussion instruments, including a tambourine playing through the entire bar, a synthesized ‘tom’ playing on beats one and three, and timbales that play a roll at the end of every second bar and free improvisation over the pattern for the duration of the song; and a synthesized Bb (b-flat) bass note on beats one and three of each bar, which follows the aforementioned synthesized ‘tom’ pattern”. This sounds much complicated to anyone, like me, who doesn’t know the underlying beats that make up a song. From what the plaintiffs are alleging, this “Fish Market” song was utilized by the 1990 song “Dem Bow” which ended up creating the “Dembow beat” that is so popular with this type of music.

The over 100 defendants (that include singers like Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi, Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, Karol G, Pitbull, and Ricky Martin) tried, and failed, to get the lawsuit dismissed through their motion. Their argument is based on the idea that the plaintiffs are trying to claim ownership over an entire genre of music that has grown exponentially in the past few years and that has become a multimillion-dollar business. As a result, the lawsuit will move forward with discovery and an in-depth analysis of the history of the genre.

Ever since Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” vs Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I.’s “Blurred Lines” case or the case against Ed Sheeran, these copyright cases have caused many singers to be worried about releasing new music that anyone could say is based on a song released in the past. There are people on both sides of the argument so it will definitely be interesting to see what ends up happening once the litigation is done.

Could an entire music genre be based directly on one song? Could this mean the end of this genre? We will definitely find out soon.