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Bad Bunny sample litigation almost settled
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 26 January 2023
A legal dispute over samples in the Bad Bunny track ‘Safaera’ is close to settlement, according to a new legal filing.
A company called BM Records sued Bad Bunny and his team back in 2021 claiming that ‘Safaera’ – which appeared on the 2020 album ‘YHLQMDLG’ – contained uncleared samples taken from a series of influential mixtapes produced by DJ Playero and released by the label.
The record company, which was an early champion of the reggaeton genre as it was first emerging in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, noted in its lawsuit that reviews of the Bad Bunny track had referenced the DJ Playero connection. Pitchfork, for example, had called it “a five-minute tribute to DJ Playero’s genre defining mixtapes of the 1990s”.
The lawsuit then stated that other samples on ‘Safaera’ had seemingly been properly licensed by Bad Bunny’s label, but that hadn’t happened with the samples that came from three Playero works: ‘Chocha Con Bicho’, ‘Besa Tu Cuerpo’ and ‘Sigan Bailando’.
DJ Playero himself posted on Instagram to stress that he was not involved in anyway in the litigation, which he called an “unfortunate situation”. He also expressed his “respect” for Bad Bunny and his collaborators on ‘Safaera’.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit continued to go through the motions, with a mediation session organised earlier this month. In a new legal filing with the court, both sides in the dispute confirm that “a settlement in principle was reached at the mediation” which is “subject to full execution of a binding written settlement agreement”.
“A draft of a settlement agreement has been circulated”, the filing continues, “but the parties expect this process to take some time since the settlement is complex and will require the review and approval of multiple corporate and individual parties”.
With that in mind, those involved in the lawsuit request that the court pause the litigation while the final details of the settlement are agreed. Needless to say, the terms of that settlement were not shared.
