XXXTentacion isn’t here to defend himself. But these allegations of plagiarism look pretty convincing.
Did XXXTentacion steal someone else’s music, simply add his voice, and pass it off as his own? That’s the pretty convincing allegation now surfacing from a composer who says his work was stolen.
The accusation involves the XXXTentacion track ‘Never,’ released in 2015 on Soundcloud. The music used for that track is exactly the same as an emo-sounding instrumental created in 2008 by the artist Aesthesys.
First, take a listen to Aesthesys’ track, called ‘Dreams Are Only Real As Long As They Last’. It was uploaded onto YouTube on May 22nd, 2010.
Now, take a listen to XXXTentacion’s track, ‘Never,’ released in 2015.
Aesthesys is a Russian composer who allowed his music to be used under certain conditions.
The artist released his music under a specific Creative Commons license, which allows other artists to use the instrumental subject to certain restrictions. Specifically, Aesthesys licensed the track under the Creative Commons license ‘BY-NC-ND 3.0,’ which allows other artists to use the track subject to the following conditions:
- The music isn’t transformed into something else (a ‘derivative work’)
- The music isn’t used to make money (no commercial use)
- Aesthesys is credited.
According to the composer, XXXTentacion violated all three of these requirements. Even worse, Aesthesys says his music was flagged on YouTube for copyright infringement, with ‘Never’ claimed as the original work. That means that the composer was forced to give ad revenue generated by his own music to XXXTentacion.
“What the flop? — I thought. This guy had the nerve to take my music without permission to create a derivative work, neglect the attribution requirement and now he even violated the last condition not to make money with it?
“He was monetising not only ‘his’ version released as ‘Never’, but mine as well, since even [the] YouTube algorithm saw that it’s the same track minus the vocals. By the end of March 2018 YouTube videos containing his version had over 20 millions of views in total.
“What I have experienced was a cocktail of sorrow, confusion and fury. And thus began my little crusade for justice.”
Before that happened, Aesthesys found ‘Never’ on Soundcloud, but decided not to take action.
Instead, he just posted an angry comment under the post, and left it at that. At that stage, XXXTentacion was largely unknown, and not generating any money off the track.
Aesthesys even offered to supply a better-quality track to the rapper. But there wasn’t a response (Aesthesys’ comment was the first one).
At a later point, the artist also tried to DM the rapper on Twitter. No response there, either.
In the Reddit post, Aesthesys (the artist name for ‘Nik’) says that he was preparing a lawsuit against XXXTentacion prior to the rapper’s death. A similar action could be directed at current copyright owners or heirs, though it doesn’t sound like Nik is planning to pursue the legal action.
Aesthesys claims that Empire Distribution, which signed XXXTentacion based on his Soundcloud surge, brushed off his initial complaints. But maybe YouTube is willing to listen — though typically in copyright disputes, YouTube simply freezes all payments.
In my legal case this means a stalemate. Chasing tales with distribution will hardly lead anywhere, as they’re not the copyright holders and did everything on behalf of Mr. Onfroy, hence it will be super easy, barely an inconvenience for them to prove that they cannot be blamed for anything, dodging the responsibility. That leaves only Mr. Onfroy’s family, which I am not going after because I still have some human decency. They are dealing with a great loss, therefore the only thing I can do is to express my condolences and share my story.
The track is still monetised though, so now I shall be channeling my energy to change that.
Anyone surprised? This dude was pure trash, the world is a better place now!
Your moms pussy is trash nigga foh
You a fuckin bitch
Shut up dumbass
Whos trash
Cause this article is doooooooooooodooooooooooo ok people
RIP XXXtentacian ⚰️⚰️????
?
i miss you (xxxtentacion)
no cap
you honestly need to shut the fuck up & Respect the dead (capital R for my boy X) yes he may or may have not done it but. People fuck up then do wrong things don’t need to count them like that when there in the grave.
reeeee
vc é doente
Naaaaaah nigga. We will all be better when your in the dirt. And the artist of the original track has it wrong. The algorithm doesn’t go thst far back. Someone reported his song. And x didn’t post it on YouTube. Others did. You don’t make money from SoundCloud. Soundcloud gets you recognized.
Broooooooooo what up though!!!
noooo i know u didnt say that doe
just because u dislike a person doesn’t mean u have to tell everyone that u are happy he died. u could get a lot of hate for it. also x has gone through so much bad in his life which gave him depression, once he changed he was assassined. just sad to be an ass.
u right
yo dude chill ur trash
Same goes for you,as soon as u die.
didn’t ask ft. don’t care
U should never wish death upon another person
X WOULD NEVER PUT THAT ON SOMEONE WHO IS DEAD SO WOULDN’T ANYONE YOU BELIEVE IN SO WHY THE NEGATIVE ENERGY ITS NOT COOL IT WONT GET YOU NOWHERE BE SOMEONE. ALSO AT LEAST HE DIDNT PUT THAT SONG TO WASTE HE MADE EVEN BETTER I DONT GET IT CANT WE MAKE THE HEAVEN WE ALL BELIEVE A REALITY..WHO KNOWS WE CAN ALL GET ALONG AND FIGURE OUR SELFS OUT WHO KNOWS. THATS JUST MY OPINION U CAN BE YOU JUST KNOW YOU HAVE SEGMENTED YOUR THOUGHTS TO THE SYSTEM YOU ARE A SLAVE TO
Would be better without you too 🙂
Damn, he was only 20
Y’all clowns for this article
you a fucking clown now don`t fucking mess with my niggas!!!Bitch
This fucking article man
So sampling is stealing music now? Ok
exactly what i said
He probably just used as an instrumental for a song, not ever knowing he’d blow up and make money off it.
tough shit.
Yo that other cunt needs to fuck off it’s x’s music now nigga
its called sampling dumb fucks
then there’s no creativity. Sampling is for trash rappers and mumble rappers. ENJOY YOU FUCKING LOSERS!
GO BACK AND GET LOST BOI
No creativity? X barley had money to make his own instrumentals dipshit
ur moms a hoe. done
lmao what? Name an artist that has beats that use 0 sampling whatsoever.
He was 16 dumbass tf you expect, people make mistakes, stfu, you acting like you never made a mistake in your life.
Damn bro, this would make total sense if artists like eminem, kendrick lamar, tupac, and biggie didn’t use samples in their music, but they do, like all the time. Fuck off.
Baby rager
But X isn’t the one making money off this song, Soundcloud doesn’t generate revenue off of songs, the song is on youtube but not on any account belonging to X, and it’s never been officially released on Spotify/Apple Music. How fucking dumb is this guy? The label has jack shit to do with this either. At least he’s not trying to take money from X’s family so that’s respectable. Not denying X stole his instrumental but that’s how it works on soundcloud for upcoming artists. smh
ur moms a hoe. done
As most have said, this was the labels doing. After he signed they didn’t look into anything and claimed all videos possible. X never uploaded Never (or any of the other songs on The Fall EP) to YouTube or anything he could make money off of.
he is still alive y’all. he died in june 18 and buried june 28th and accused of plagiarism in the 25th, that can’t be real. no offense tho instead R.I.P XXXTentacion.
i love u bbg. u’ll be with me soon <3 <3
ima fuck u up dawg
come at me foh
ima rape u nigga no capppppp ????????
Literally jah didn’t make shit off that there’s no reason to say that when it wasn’t a big song at all