PewDiePie’s viral ‘Congratulations’ diss track gets false copyright claim [UPDATED]

YouTube king Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg released his ‘Congratulations’ diss track against T-Series in late March, flinging up a lot of dirt against the label in the process – but now, the song is stirring up controversy for a different reason.

Update – April 8

TuneCore, a platform that helps artists sell their music worldwide, has issued a statement regarding the incident involving PewDiePie’s song being copyright struck. 

“We are aware of the recent incident of a user claiming a PewDiePie song that he or she does not own the rights to,” they tweeted. “We have taken action against the customer who distributed this song and deactivated the account.”

Original Story

YouTube channel FlareTV appropriately played ‘Congratulations’ on their livestream of PewDiePie and T-Series’ subscriber count following the song’s release – but if viewers visit the video now, they will merely hear Kjellberg’s original diss track, ‘Bitch Lasagna.’

Viewers spoke out on the issue out of apparent frustration, wondering why the new track had been replaced with its predecessor in light of PewDiePie’s surprising victory over T-Series.

Why is FlareTV’s livestream getting copy striked?

The teenage duo behind FlareTV addressed fan concerns in their video’s chat, claiming that ‘Congratulations’ had been copy striked by a music label.

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“Please stop asking about ‘Congratulations,’” they wrote. “It’s copyrighted and I cannot play it on stream.”

The teenage duo behind FlareTV claimed that they cannot play PewDiePie’s ‘Congratulations’ on their livestream, as the song has been copyrighted.

Who owns the rights to ‘Congratulations?’

However, PewDiePie’s editor ‘Sive’ Osman later clarified that the song had not been copyrighted by his team, explaining that another company had claimed the video – even though they don’t own the rights to the song.

“Team YouTube some company called Tunecore are claiming videos on or using PewDiePie’s ‘Congratulations’ song,” he Tweeted of the debacle. “They don’t represent him. How are they getting away with this? Sort this out as soon as [possible].”

Attached to the editor’s Tweet was a screenshot of the claim in question, proving that the song had been claimed by Tunecore on behalf of PewDiePie.

Thanks to investigation by Drama Alert’s Daniel ‘KEEMSTAR’ Keem, Tunecore appeared to have claimed the video due to an instrumental version of the song called ‘Buckwild,’ created by an artist named Pontus Pettersson in September 2017.

PewDiePie’s response to “white supremacist” controversy

This development follows PewDiePie’s response to a petition seeking to ban him from YouTube due to alleged white supremacist content, which has gained over 76,000 signatures as of April 7.

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PewDiePie vehemently decried any white supremacists using his content as a platform, and noted that the petition contained “flat-out lies” about moments in his YouTube career.

YouTube has yet to respond to Sive’s Tweet concerning the copystriking of FlareTV’s video as of writing this article.