The Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning hit ‘Shallow’ from the movie A Star is Born by Lady Gaga has been threatened with Court Action by an obscure artist called Steve Ronsen.
Ronsen is accusing Lady Gaga of stealing a three-note progression from his song ‘Almost’ which released in 2012. Before this threat, Ronsen’s song had less than 300 streams on Soundcloud the popular music streaming site and is now nearing 300,000 streams since then.
Ronsen and his legal representation claimed, with the support of a renowned Musicologist that, there are significant tempo, melodic, rhythmic and harmonic similarities between the two hooks. Aiming to defend this threat Gaga’s team of Lawyers are claiming that this chord progression has been used multiple times in the past and therefore, it is not claimable. One example of a song with a similar chord progression is the 1978 Kansas song ‘Dust in the Wind’. As well as this Lady Gaga’s legal team stated that, even Ronsen’s Musicologist report, which he is relying upon agreed that this progression is prevalent in many other songs predating Ronsen’s song ‘Almost’.
It will be for Ronsen and his Lawyer to prove that one of the four credited artists who wrote the song: Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando and Andrew Wyatt were one of the 300 people that listened to his song. Which is unlikely as it is so obscure therefore they never would have had exposure to the song and subsequently were unlikely to have copied the work.
It seems that Ronsen and his Lawyer are trying to shakedown Lady Gaga for millions of dollars as she has a successful hit and wants her to settle without going through court action. There seems to be a current trend on David and Goliath attempts when looking at music copyright recently where a lesser-known artist is trying to make a big payday off the work of famous artists or artist which have generated a lot of income off of a hit song. It is unclear if Steve Ronsen will take this matter to court.
All of this has followed after famous Musician Katy Perry lost her court case and was liable for $2.8 million in a case which had arguably lowered the threshold for copyright law and will result in more lawsuits.
By Owen White Third Year Law Student at Solent University
