Ed Sheeran successfully defended his copyright court case, what is chord progression and why do so many songs use it?

Question

I watched a video where he demonstrated that many songs use the same tune / Chord progression (?). What is chord progression and why was the one in question essentially uncopyrightable?

In: 531

Answer 1

Chords are to music as words are to language

so a chord progression is like a sentence

so trying to copywrite a chord progression is like trying to copywrite “once upon a time…” or “so we went to down to the river” simply because you published a story that contained those sentences.

It’s not quite that simple but that is the general gist of it