Nemanja Mitrovic
BBC journalist
"Uncle, you know Snoop Dogg stole your song."
Thus, Zdenko Radeta, keyboardist for the Belgrade jazz-rock band 37°C, unexpectedly learned from his nephew that parts of his 1979 song "Weary Traveler" had been used without authorization in a song featuring a popular American rapper.
It's about the song "180 Days" by American producer Harry Fraud (Harry fraud) and rapper Currency (Curren $ y).
"They took my footage without permission. If they had asked, we would have agreed, but they didn't," Radeta tells BBC Serbian.
On the website of the American Copyright Organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), Calvin Broadus (Snoop Dogg), Shante Franklin (Currency) and Rory William Quickley (Harry Fraud) are listed as authors.
The name of Zdenko Radeta, the creator of the song that was used as the instrumental backing, the so-called matrix, is not mentioned anywhere.
Court expert Ognjen Uzelac says that "Izmoreni putnik" was exploited by having parts of the song's phonogram (sound recording) "altered and incorporated" into the phonogram "180 Days".
"As a phonogram is a sound recording of the interpretation of an author's musical work, this has violated a whole range of copyright and related rights," Uzelac, who conducted the expert evaluation of the song, told BBC Serbian.
The American rapper did not respond to questions from BBC journalists about whether he was aware that someone else's music was used in the song he guest-wrote, as well as why the original author was not contacted or signed, until the text was published.
There has been no response from the BMI organization, which currently has a complete stake in this song, meaning all revenue from broadcasting and public announcements goes to the registered individuals in the organization.
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A weary traveler and 180 days
The song "Izmoreni putnik" by the Belgrade band 37°C, featuring singer Baby Doll, was recorded at Gooseberry Studios in London in the summer of 1979.
She waited for the official release, like the rest of the material, until 2017, when the album "Sidarta" was released for the Belgrade publishing house. Discom.
Three years later, he saw the light of day and "The Director's Cut", an album by Harry Fraud and Currency, which features the song "180 days", more than 300.000 times listened to on YouTube and 400.000 on the streaming service Spotify.
Its musical background consists of four cut parts of a composition by Zdenko Radeta, who is particularly bothered by the sentence at the beginning of the song, which is spoken in Spanish by a female voice - the music of Harry Fraud (music by Herija Frauda).
"That particularly annoys me, how can it be his music?"
"These are all my notes, I composed them and the music is mine, not his," the Belgrade composer says in revolt.
Luka Novaković, owner of the publishing house Discom, he also did a musical evaluation of the song.
He says that four segments of up to 10 seconds were taken from the original - with vocals, guitar and synthesizer.
"No special intervention was performed except that the pitch was raised and the original tempo increased from 128.3 to 149.9 BPM (beats per minute)," Novaković explains to BBC Serbian.
His record label is also not listed on the BMI website, but rather three American labels, or publishers - companies that represent copyrights, are listed as publishers, he adds.
"In every sense, they have an absolute material benefit from the exploitation of the work - through the sale of sound recordings and broadcasting, and they can also license the material for film purposes."
Radeta says that upon returning from London, he "protected" the recorded material in SOKOJ, the then Union of Composers' Organizations of Yugoslavia, now the organization of Serbian music authors.
"Issues of using musical works, both foreign and domestic, in cases where the direct consent of the author is necessary fall under issues related to individual exercise of rights, which are not within the jurisdiction of Sokoj," the organization told BBC Serbian.
They also have no jurisdiction, they add, in the case of using someone else's work without the author's signature, as this falls within the scope of moral copyright infringement.
If there is no amicable solution, authors can go to court and protect their own rights.
Recordings by the 37°C group are also registered and protected by the Organization of Phonogram Producers of Serbia (OPFS).
A whole range of violated rights
This violates the moral and property rights of authors, performers and phonogram producers, Uzelac points out.
"Zdenko's exclusive moral right to recognition of authorship, to indication of the name, and to protection of the integrity of the work has been violated."
"Then, the exclusive copyright property right to allow or prohibit others from adapting, arranging, and otherwise modifying their work," explains a court expert at the Higher and Commercial Court in Belgrade for the special field of copyright, specializing in discography.
Among other things, the "exclusive moral and property rights of the performers" - the 37°C group - to "be recognized as such, to oppose the modification and exploitation of their performance", as well as to "prohibit or permit the reproduction and distribution of the recording" were violated.
Uzelac also states that "the exclusive right of the producer of the phonogram 'Izmoreni putnik' to prohibit or permit others to reproduce and put into circulation, as well as to make their phonogram interactively available to the public, has also been violated."
The copyright holder and producer of the phonogram is Zdenko Radeta, as well as the holder of the phonogram rights, with Discom, publisher and representative.
Available legal tools
The problem can be resolved by agreement or by filing a lawsuit before domestic or foreign courts, since copyright and related rights laws are "fairly harmonized" at the international level.
If actual damage is proven in the proceedings before a domestic court, it will have the same effect on American authors as if it had been established before an American court, says Uzelac.
"The difference is in the so-called statutory damages, i.e. the amount of damages prescribed by law in the event of a violation of rights intentionally or through gross negligence," he explains.
These amounts are significantly higher in America than in Serbia, due to the size of the market and the strength of the economy, he adds.
"The question is not whether legal protection can be obtained in the US, but whether it is cost-effective."
It is difficult to protect yourself from such injuries, so "solving the problem most often comes down to repairing the consequences," says Uzelac.
The author would prevent the problem by registering his work with the US Copyright Office (Copyright Office), which would mean that the threatened legal damage would be significantly greater than the potential compensation for damages, explains the court expert.
Accordingly, "it is unrealistic to expect the majority of musicians and their works" to undertake "such effective protection", and registering a work in America also involves certain costs.
American court as a possibility
Proceeding before courts in the United States, with the engagement of an American lawyer who would work on a percentage of the value of the case, is the most acceptable solution for both Novaković and Radeta.
Novaković says they have already contacted an American lawyer who confirmed to them that the case would be "much simpler and easier to resolve" if the composition and recording had been registered with the US Copyright Office.
"If we had done that, we could have sought legal damages, which in this case would have been $300.000 for the recording and composition," Novaković claims.
Legal compensation in America, the court-determined amount ranges from $750 to $30.000.
If there was an accidental copyright infringement, the amount is up to $200, and if the infringement was intentional, up to $150.000.
Since the song is not registered in America, "actual damages resulting from the infringement of these rights" would have to be "determined," which could be significantly lower than attorney fees.
"This is a completely clean case, the injury is clear."
"A potential settlement with Snoop and his crew would make some sense," he adds.
Another option is to file a lawsuit before domestic courts and hire an American lawyer after the verdict is issued.
"But if you get a verdict in Belgrade, there is no way to recover damages from an American citizen," says Novaković.
The case of the song 'No one knows who you are'
American performers also used parts of the KIM song "Ne zna se ko si" without authorization, claims author and band leader Kire Mitra.
A more than four-decade-old Yugoslav jazz-funk piece served as the musical background for the song "loose change" manufacturer Alkemist (The Alchemist) and rapper Earl Sweatshirt (Earl Sweatshirt).
"'Come on, whatever they take, but at least let them register me, so I can get something out of it as the author of the entire music, arrangements and band leader," Mitrev says resignedly to the BBC in Serbian.
He found out by chance that his "music had been stolen" from fans, who sent him an American rap song from 2021, which has been listened to almost two million times on YouTube, while on Spotify that number is far higher - more than 50 million.
On the websites of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (American Society Of Composers, Authors And Publishers - ASCAP) and BMI organizations, the song's authors are Alan Maman (Alchemist) and Tim Kegositsail (Earl Sweatshirt).
The share is 50/50, which means that the entire income generated by broadcasting the song is distributed in two equal parts to the organizations, or rather their registered persons.
There is also an instrumental version of "loose change" independently signed by Alan Maman (The Alchemist).
The name of the original author of the music, Kiret Mitrev, is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the group KIM or the title of the song from the album "Ne, žista žurim", released in 1981 for Belgrade's PGP RTB.
The BBC journalist tried to contact the producer Alchemist, as well as the American organizations BMI and ASCAP, but no responses were received by the time of publication.
Mitrev also contacted SOKOJ a few years ago, which informed its sister organization, the American BMI, about the problem, but the dispute has not been resolved to this day.
"They are powerless, even though they had the will to deal with it and received answers that nothing concrete was done," Silvana Delovska Mitrev, Kiret's wife and singer of the band KIM, told BBC Serbian.
They were also advised to find a specialized lawyer in America to handle the dispute, but such an endeavor requires a lot of money.
The "only solution" is to collect a percentage of the winning lawsuit.
"The conclusion is that musicians are left to fend for themselves, they have no protection," says Silvana.
Mitrev is the author of the hits "Frka" and "Ljubi me brzo žurim", which were covered by the band Nipplepeople and producer SevdahBABY, while several other foreign artists, without permission, used his song "Do your own thing".
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The fundamental principles of sampling
One of the main characteristics of rap music, the "DNA of hip hop", is sampling - the use of other people's audio recordings, in one's own songs, for an instrumental background (matrix).
However, certain rules must be followed here too.
"There are clear artistic, stylistic principles that prevented large parts of existing compositions from being stolen and practically protected the sampled authors, or rather, ordered beatmakers (instrumentalists) to create a new, authentic work of art from those recordings," explains hip hop expert, DJ and rapper Predrag Vukčević (Bege Funk), for BBC Serbian.
Unauthorized use of someone else's music "in an aesthetic and creative sense, would be condemned by most beatmakers from the golden age of hip hop" from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, he believes.
Sampling then, in practice, meant taking, for example, drums, a brass line, and a bass part separately from different performers, and then fitting it all into a new whole.
These "primordial principles" were largely abandoned under pressure from the music industry in the 1990s, when frequent sampling of large parts of other people's songs, or melodies, began.
A famous example is the song "I'll Be Missing You", American rapper Diddy (then Paf Dedi) from 1997, where the entire part of the big hit "Every Breath You Take"Polis group (The Police).
Copyright is well regulated here, so Sean Combs, recently accused of numerous sexual assaults, pays the frontman of the English band Sting $5.000 a day, which is published on the social network Iks.
Jay-Z awarded for song by Montenegrin musician
In addition to negative examples, a few successful collaborations have also been recorded.
So it is in the song "Duckworth." from 2017 by the famous American rapper Kendrick Lamar sampled the composition "Leave a Trace" by the jazz-rock band September from Ljubljana.
Janez Bončina, the creator of the song and guitarist of a Yugoslav band from the 1970s, says it all started with correspondence and asking who the author was, and eventually an agreement and contract were reached.
"The pool of those South American and other samples probably emptied, so they discovered 'Juga', that there's a lot of soul and funk stuff there, that was created in the 1970s, and among them is Septembar," Bench, as this musician's nickname is, tells BBC Serbian.
The song "Leave a Trace" was first released in 1974 on the solo album "Majko zemljo" by Tihomir Pop Asanović, the future keyboardist of Septembr, also involved in communication, and was sung by Josipa Lisac.
The famous musician Adolf Dado Topić wrote the lyrics for this song, which appeared two years later on the album "Zadnja avantura" by the group Septembar.
Initial contact with the original authors was established by the producer 9th Wonder, only to later find out that it was a song for Kendrick Lamar.
Realizing that it was a "big deal," Bončina "officially handed over the correspondence to his publishing company, Nika Records."
After multiple exchanges of messages and contracts, they reached an agreement for mutual benefit, so now the BMI website, in addition to many other names, also lists Janez Bončina, Dado Topić (songwriter) and Petar Ugrin (singer).
Fees and royalties are arriving regularly, and the unauthorized use of his songs, which was previously a common occurrence, has stopped, says Bončina.
And interest in the work of the group September has also increased because Lamar's song indirectly helped make the Yugoslav band known around the world.
A successful collaboration was also recorded between American rapper Jay-Z (Jay Z) and Janko Nilović, a multi-instrumentalist and musician of Montenegrin origin who has lived in France for years.
This is a sample from Nilović's jazz-funk composition "In The Space", from the late 1960s, used in 2009 in the song "DOA (Death of Autotune)" by the New York rapper.
Nilović says that Sean Carter, as the rapper's real name is, probably found his song on YouTube, called him and asked for permission to sample it, which the older colleague accepted.
The two artists then signed a contract, and the American won a Grammy Award for the song.
"Jay Z was one of the first users of my songs, and after that many other artists sampled them, more than 50," Nilović concludes with satisfaction, for BBC Serbian.
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