It's a relief for Ed Sheeran.

"We can now go back to writing songs instead of proving that we wrote them well," he said after the trial against Sami Chokri.

The grime artist accused him of having copied his song

Oh Why

, released in 2015, to compose

Shape of You

, the 2017 hit, co-written by Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac.

The judge of the High Court of London, Antony Zacaroli, considered that the British singer had "neither deliberately nor unknowingly copied" the song of his colleague.

During the trial, which lasted eleven days in March, Sami Chokri had argued that it was impossible that Ed Sheeran had not listened to his title, having many contacts in common and while he had done everything to make him reach the song.

The judge considered that it was “speculation”, as relayed by the BBC, and that, for him, Ed Sheeran “did not hear” the piece in question.

22 million songs per year

Now cleared, Ed Sheeran tackled the subject head-on by posting a video statement on his Instagram account.

The artist, who was also speaking on behalf of his co-authors, initially hoped that this judgment would allow “in the future” to avoid “such baseless complaints”.

He then explained that he was deeply bruised by the accusations, just like Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac.

“It's really destructive for the recording industry.

(…) The coincidence will happen with 60,000 songs being released every day on Spotify.

That's 22 million songs a year and there are only 12 notes available, ”added Ed Sheeran, taking up the figures from the streaming platform.

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