The Chainsmokers have been the focus of news all over the world the past two years. First for their domination of the Billboard charts with hits like ‘Closer' and ‘Roses' but even more recently for their massive world tour which has hit stops in dozens of countries.
Now the duo has hit international spotlight for a copyright infringement claim coming from one of the hottest K-Pop groups making waves out of South Korea. The group SEVENTEEN has been railed on social media for an apparent similarity between their track “Don't Wanna Cry” with The Chainsmokers collaboration with Coldplay, ‘Something Just Like This'. You can take a listen to the two tracks side by side below in the video.
When you do compare the tracks you find that “Don't Wanna Cry” is really at it's core almost an exact replica of “Something Just Like This” with a +3 pitch shift. The similarities and fan outrage lead to Pledis Entertainment – the publishing company of the group – to release the below statement and add both The Chainsmokers and Coldplay to the tracks ASCAP.
“We received inquiries about the similarity of some of the melodies between the songs from the two publishing parties. We are asserting that ‘Don't Wanna Cry' is an independently created song but we were worried that the artists would suffer a great amount of stress if it came to legal disputes and that their image might adversely be affected regardless of the truth. Because of the listed reasons above, we decided to grant/acknowledge a piece of copyright to them.”
They finished off by saying, “In fact, if you check the list of copyright holders to this song, the names of the artists who participated remain the same. We would like to apologize to all the artists and fans who were worried and concerned due to the company's decision.”
https://youtu.be/A3ZitAGRMcY
