Earlier this year, Ed Sheeran was in the news for the wrong reasons when he was accused of plagiarising his hit song ‘Shape of You’. 

He eventually won that copyright case at a High Court trial, but the whole ordeal seems to have changed the singer’s outlook.

Sheeran has come up with an interesting method to tackle further accusations of music copyright: he now films “every single writing session” to prevent any problematic claims in future.

In a new interview with BBC2’s Newsnight, Sheeran and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid – who was also named in the recent copyright case – detailed their new plan for recording sessions, with Sheeran saying “I film everything.”

“We’ve had claims come through on songs and we go, ‘Well here’s the footage and you watch, and you’ll see that there’s nothing there,'” he explained.

‘Shape of You’ wasn’t the first Sheeran song to come with accusations of plagiarism: he was previously embroiled in a copyright case over ‘Photograph’ in 2017. He told Newsnight that he regrets settling that case for $20 million as it resulted in “the floodgates (being) opened” for similar claims.

“I didn’t play ‘Photograph’ for ages after that,” Sheeran said. “I just stopped playing it. I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty. And we’ve now got to a point where we actually own all of the song again.”

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Sheeran also revealed how his songwriting process has been irrevocably changed. “I personally think the best feeling in the world is the euphoria around the first idea of writing a great song,” he said. “That feeling has now turned into, ‘Oh wait, let’s stand back for a minute.'”

Sheeran also expressed his relief that the most recent copyright case is came to an end: “I’m happy it’s over. I’m happy we can move on and get back to writing songs. Lawsuits are not fun for anyone involved. And yeah, I think across all sides it was not a nice experience.”

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