Renowned gospel artist, Joe Mettle, has urged dynamic gospel music group, Team Eternity Ghana and Kwame Mickey, the executive producer for Hallelujah Voices’ to amicably solve the copyright infringement dispute of the ‘defe defe’ song.
Team Eternity Ghana’s “Defe Defe” has topped social media charts, garnering over two million views on YouTube since its release on May 1, 2024.
However, Kwame Mickey alleges that the group unlawfully sampled Hallelujah Voices’ 2004 song of the same name, written by Osuani Afrifa and produced by Kaakyire Music Productions.
Mickey has threatened legal action if Team Eternity Ghana fails to acknowledge the original creators of the song.
Joe Mettle, in an interview on Citi FM’s Breakfast Show, urged both parties to resolve the issue amicably, emphasising that the alleged infringement was only a sample.
He stressed the importance of registering songs and using proper publishing platforms to avoid similar controversies.
He stated, “I think that the songs when released must be registered, put on proper publishing platforms, it helps even if it happens that somebody samples or does anything, the system will pick it from the source, nothing will be a problem. Because you see, part of some of these reasons too are the reasons why we are losing a lot of old songs because some songs should not die. It has to be rerecorded.”
“I also understand the fact that permission needs to be sought but even the one you need to ask to record you will not know. Sometimes you can search and search, but you won’t find anything, we are losing a lot of songs so for me, I think even with this Team Eternity issue, they could have just solved it amicably because it wasn’t the whole song, it was a sample.”
Source: citinewsroom
