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The results are in: for the first quarter of 2024, Warner Chappell earned the top spot on the Country Airplay publisher rankings for the second quarter in a row.
With a 33.08% market share, WCM, helmed in Nashville by president/CEO Ben Vaughn, is the top publisher. This is thanks to the shares the publisher had in eight of the top 10 songs of the quarter. Overall, it also had stakes in 68 of the quarter’s top 100 Country Airplay songs, including Country Airplay No. 1 Nate Smith’s “World On Fire,” HARDY’s No. 2 “Truck Bed,” and Warren Zeider’s No. 3 track “Pretty Little Poison.”
Apart from Sony Music Publishing’s five-consecutive-quarter reign at No. 1 from Q3 of 2022 to Q3 of 2023, Warner Chappell has consistently held the quarterly top country music publisher title in Nashville, dating back to about 2017.
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This quarter Sony Music Publishing held in second place with a 20.04% market share on the Country Airplay chart. SMP has shares in 51 of the chart’s songs including the top two tunes this quarter, which are both thanks to its tie to one of Nashville’s biggest hitmakers Ashley Gorley, who sold his catalog and signed a go-forward deal with SMP (in partnership with Domain Capital Group) in May 2022. For the first quarter, Gorley ranked as the top country songwriter, with a co-writer stake in 16 of the period’s Top 100 Country Airplay songs.
The rest of the market share for other companies on the Country Airplay chart lags far behind Nashville’s top two publishers. BMG comes in third, for example, with 8.18% market share, which is slightly more than two percentage points up from where they were last year in Q1 with 6.09% Country Airplay marketshare. It is the first time BMG has ranked above major publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, since Q1 of 2018. Top songs for the publisher this quarter include Cody Johnson’s “The Painter,” the No. 4 song on the Country Airplay chart, and Chayce Beckham’s “23,” the No. 8 tune.
Universal Music Publishing Group holds the fourth spot this quarter with 6.85% market share on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Just three quarters ago, UMPG had an especially good quarter with a 12.71% ranking — about double what it reached this time. Top songs for UMPG include Thomas Rhett’s “Mawmaw’s House,” the No. 5 song and Scotty McCreery’s “Cab in a Solo,” the No. 15 tune.
Looking at the rankings from No. 5 to No. 8, Kobalt ranks fifth in market share for the Country Airplay chart at 5.78%; Big Machine Music slightly surpasses Concord at 4.11% to 4.10% market shares, respectively; Spirit Music ranks eighth with 2.02%.
The ninth largest publisher on the Country Airplay chart belongs to Purple Rabbit Music, the publishing company that represents songwriter Tracy Chapman. The spot represents the continued impact her song “Fast Car,” which was covered by Luke Combs last year and performed by the two artists together at the Grammy awards earlier this year. Its placement in the rankings represents its debut for the Top 10 Country Airplay publishers.
Lastly, Anthem brings up the end of the Top 10 Country Airplay publishers with a 1.87% marketshare, a tick below Purple Rabbit’s 1.88% share for the quarter.
Last CPQ: Tracy Chapman and Oliver Anthony Make History
Warner Chappell Music (WCM) has signed a global publishing deal with 4-time Grammy nominee and jazz/R&B star Patrice Rushen. Known for her work with artists like Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Prince, Rushen is also celebrated for her groundbreaking role as the first female musical director for top award shows, including the Grammys and Emmys.
Reservoir Media has acquired the producer royalties and publishing catalog of the late hip-hop producer-songwriter Deon “Big D” Evans, best known for his work with Tupac Shakur. Evans, acclaimed for producing hits like “Brenda’s Got a Baby” and the Grammy-nominated “Changes,” significantly shaped hip-hop and collaborated with other notable artists like Digital Underground and Ne-Yo.
Brandon Silverstein Publishing and Avex USA have teamed up to sign Kavi to a worldwide publishing deal. While the 21-year-old producer is perhaps best known for his hit song “Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richmond, which recently reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hip-Hop/R&B chart, Kavi has also crafted the sound of other talents, including Yeat and KanKan.
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Warner Chappell Music (WCM) has signed a global publishing deal with songwriter and producer Toby Daintree, known for his work with Artemas on hits like “i like the way you kiss me” and “if you think I’m pretty.” Daintree, a multi-instrumentalist, has also collaborated with artists such as FKA Twigs and Joy Crookes, and will now work closely with WCM UK’s team to further his career.
Armada Music‘s BEAT Music Fund, its dance music investment fund, has expanded by acquiring the artist and songwriter royalties for Jax Jones‘s catalog, including shares of “You Don’t Know Me” with RAYE and “All Day and Night” with Madison Beer and Martin Solveig. It has also acquired the artist shares of Australian singer/songwriter AMBA SHEPHERD‘s catalog, including dance hits with artists like Hardwell, R3HAB, Porter Robinson, and QUIX. Lastly, BEAT is partnering with Sola Records on a joint venture, including signees Maur & FABER, Draxx and Majestic.
Sony Music Publishing Nashville and CAM Creative have signed country music songwriter Ryan Larkins to a global publishing deal. Known for co-writing Bill Anderson’s Grammy-nominated “Someday It’ll All Make Sense” and Cody Johnson’s #1 hit “The Painter,” Larkins has collaborated with legends like Tony Lane and Tom Douglas and recently released his debut EP with Red Street Records.
Writer-artist Matt Stell renewed his publishing deal with Endurance Music Group (EMG). The move comes as he preps the June 7 release of Born Lonely, his first full-length album to emerge since his 2019 signing with RECORDS Nashville. Every track on the project was co-written by Stell, who reached No. 1 on Country Airplay with his first two RECORDS singles, “Prayed for You” and “Everywhere But On,” both of which he also co-wrote. Stell joined EMG in 2020 when the publishing house purchased Wide Open Music. –Tom Roland
Position Music has inked a worldwide publishing deal with London-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Merrifield. Merrifield, known for his work with artists like Lewis Capaldi, Marshmello and Mimi Webb, has recently contributed to hits like “American Psycho” and the UK Top 10 single “Good Without,” and has upcoming projects with Marshmello, Cheat Codes, and Zara Larsson.
Producer, songwriter, and composer Hilton Wright II has signed an exclusive global administration deal with Warner Chappell Music. Along with the deal, his media company, Seven15 Labs, has launched its music publishing division through an exclusive global administration and co-publishing deal with Warner Chappell, aiming to expand the reach and impact of Wright’s extensive catalog, which includes work with Big Sean, Mike Posner, and brands like Walmart and Ford.
Warner Chappell Music (WCM), alongside The Roots and Live Nation Urban, is launching the ‘Message in the Music’ songwriting camp from May 28th to June 1st in Philadelphia, coinciding with the Roots Picnic 2024 festival. The camp will honor Philly music legends Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell, showcasing their legacy and promoting contemporary local songwriting talent. Hosted by Ryan Press (WCM), Shawn Gee (Live Nation Urban), Pop Wansel, and The Roots’ Questlove and Black Thought, the camp aims to create opportunities for local writers and producers. Over 50 writers and artists, including top talents from Philadelphia and WCM’s roster, are expected to attend. Select songs from Gamble, Huff and Bell’s catalog will be available for sampling via WCM’s Beat Broker platform to mark the trio’s 60th Anniversary.
Concord Music Publishing has signed an exclusive worldwide administration deal with Emmy and Drama Desk-nominated composer and lyricist Eli Bolin, covering his entire catalog and future works. Bolin is renowned for his work on Documentary Now!, Sesame Street, Nine Perfect Strangers, and the Netflix special John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch.
Sony Music Publishing hosted its second annual SMP x BeatStars Hitmaker Week, a global songwriting camp held from April 1-5 in Miami, Florida at Circle House Studios. The event hosted 67 songwriters/producers and artists from around the world for collaborative writing sessions, educational workshops and more. This included Farruko, Brray, Nardo Wick, Rob 49 and ScarLip, among others.
Seeker Music has partnered with Latin record label and entertainment company MITH Media to jointly sign songwriters and artists, manage catalogs and expand into the LATAM and U.S. Latin-music markets. The first signings under this partnership are Grammy-nominated songwriter K. Sotomayor and singer-songwriter Dēlian, with plans to develop new projects and actively manage Seeker’s catalog in Latin America.
Boom.Records is entering a partnership with Warner Chappell Music to launch Boom.Publishing. WCM will administer the publishing rights for Boom.Publishing’s signees as well as offer more creative support through writing camps and sessions.
1916 Enterprises has welcomed multiple new songwriters to its publishing company. This includes Nashville-based songwriter Carly Paige, Los Angeles-based producer Jack Riley, and Olivia Kiene (through a joint venture with Sevs Publishing).
A Department of Justice lawsuit against Live Nation for violating U.S. antitrust laws is imminent and could be filed as soon as Thursday (May 23), a source with knowledge of the DOJ’s plans tells Billboard.
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The lawsuit is rumored to charge that Live Nation has a monopoly on event ticketing through Ticketmaster and that it illegally uses its monopoly power to grow its business and stifle competition. The DOJ has been investigating Live Nation for more than two years. With that investigation now wrapped, company president Joe Berchtold recently said he was that he was hopeful his company would avoid a legal showdown with the DOJ’s top antitrust lawyer, Jonathan Kanter.
“These are always serious discussions. We wouldn’t get to this point if they didn’t have concerns, but the good news is we’re still talking and they’ve said they have an open mind,” Berchtold told attendees at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference in Boston on Tuesday (May 21).
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“Without getting into the real details of the conversation, I think it’s fair to say I continue to believe that we fundamentally have business practices that are fully defensible,” Berchtold added, before continuing: “We’re also open to figuring out common ground in order to get this settled and moved on. But we don’t know exactly what they want at this point still.”
Live Nation declined to comment for this story.
The Department of Justice’s case is believed to be centered around Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts when signing up venues for its ticketing services. Typically, Ticketmaster pays venues an advance on the revenue that it generates from the fees it charges consumers as part of the ticket-buying process. The longer the contract, the larger the advance Ticketmaster can pay out.
DOJ officials don’t like the practice, arguing that it locks out new companies from competing in the ticketing space. Ticketmaster officials, however, argue that they are open to working with non-exclusive contracts — both the Greek Theatre in Hollywood and Red Rocks in Denver are open facilities where promoters use the ticketing provider of their choice — but that venues often rely on exclusive deals to meet their capital needs.
While Ticketmaster holds more exclusive ticketing contracts than any other company, it isn’t the only one to make use of them: Every major competitor pays upfront advances in exchange for exclusive ticketing agreements with venues and sports teams.
That includes SeatGeek, which reportedly paid $10 million in 2021 for exclusive rights to ticket events at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for a seven-year term. Two years into the agreement, Billboard reported at the time, Barclays Center and BSE Global chief executive Sam Zussman threatened to publicize SeatGeek’s tech problems and breaches of contract if it didn’t immediately agree to terminate the deal.
SeatGeek eventually agreed to wind down its relationship with Barclays Center and was replaced by Ticketmaster. DOJ officials reportedly scrutinized the incident during its investigation of Live Nation.
In the wake of a falling out between RBD and its ex-manager and business partner Guillermo Rosas — a split made public in January when Billboard reported that the two had parted ways — the Mexican band has shared an official statement addressing the ongoing dispute.
In a statement issued Wednesday (May 22), RBD responded to previous claims made by Rosas and his company, T6H, to People En Español that there was “no financial mismanagement” tied to the band’s ultra-successful Soy Rebelde Tour. Hitting back at that characterization, RBD members Anahí, Christopher Von Uckermann, Dulce María, Christian Chávez and Maite Perroni claim that there were in fact “significant irregularities” revealed in a forensic accounting investigation led by Critin Cooperman, alleging that nearly $1 million remains unaccounted for after T6H began receiving funds related to the tour in December 2022.
According to the official statement issued by RBD’s lawyers and shared with Billboard, T6H and Citrin Cooperman — a services firm that acted as a business manager for the tour and also conducted the financial audit — were the “only entities responsible for the tour payments.” None of RBD’s members “had access to manage the money or make payments,” the band claims.
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Furthermore, the band says, T6H has “hindered the process” by not signing “key” documents necessary for the resolution of payments and the tour, which marked RBD’s grand return to touring after splitting in 2008.
Billboard reached out to T6H for comment but did not hear back by press time.
“Given the considerable amount of money involved and the discrepancies found, all our projects are currently on hold. We have had to pause this shared dream with you, including a possible continuation of the tour,” the statement continues. “Our goal has always been to resolve these discrepancies professionally. We remain committed to cooperating with all parties involved to achieve a fair and transparent resolution. Our integrity and the trust of our fans are paramount, and we will not rest until these matters fully resolve.”
In December, RBD wrapped its massive world tour, which, as of Nov. 30, had grossed $197.1 million since launching in August. Rosas also worked with the band as a concert promoter from 2006 to 2008.
Under a new business model designed for RBD’s comeback tour, the five members and Rosas were deemed equal partners in a new joint venture. The deal had the band splitting all new revenue, including for music, with Rosas, who in 2020 helped clear the rights to the group’s catalog. He also brought Live Nation on board as the promoter for the reunion tour and CAA for global representation of the band.
Apple has launched a legal challenge against the 1.8 billion euro ($1.95 billion) fine assessed by the European Commission for breaking competition laws and unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals including Spotify.
According to court records, the U.S. tech giant filed an appeal with the EU’s Luxembourg-based General Court earlier this month.
Details of what is contained in the legal action, listed as: “Apple and Apple Distribution International v Commission,” are not yet publicly available. Representatives of Apple and the European Commission did not respond to requests to comment.
Apple had previously said it would appeal the EU’s fine, which was handed down in March following a long-running investigation triggered by complaints from Swedish streaming service Spotify.
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At the time of the ruling, the European Commission’s Margrethe Vestager said Apple had “abused its dominant position” for almost a decade by restricting rival music streaming apps from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the App Store.
As a result, many users paid “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions” because of the high fee imposed by Apple on developers, which was then passed on to users, the commission said.
Apple has always strongly denied those claims, arguing that EU investigators had failed “to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm.” The commission’s decision “ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast,” the tech company said in a statement two months ago.
The nearly $2 billion fine was issued as part of an ongoing EU-wide effort to rein in the global dominance of big tech companies through large financial penalties and regulatory measures.
In March, just a few days after Apple received its penalty notice, new EU rules came into force governing how the largest online platforms operate in Europe as part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The DMA requires the six tech giants designated as “gatekeepers” by the European Commission — Apple, Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft — to comply with a raft of provisions, including not favoring in-house services at the expense of third-party providers.
The laws are enforceable by fines of up to 20% of total worldwide turnover (a.k.a. gross revenue) or, in extreme cases, the “last resort option” of forced divestments and the break-up of businesses.
In response, companies like Apple have been overhauling how they operate in the 27-member EU bloc, allowing European users to download rival app stores and lowering the fees charged to developers for purchases made through the App Store.
However, Apple’s plans to charge “high volume” services with over 1 million users a €0.50 ($0.54) “core technology fee” per download, per year, for using alternatives to the App Store has been heavily criticized by a number of European businesses, including Spotify and Deezer.
On March 25, the EU announced that it was investigating Apple, along with Meta and Alphabet, for potential breaches and non-compliance with the DMA’s terms.
Apple’s legal challenge against the commission’s $1.95 billion fine opens yet another battlefront with EU regulators. The tech company has previously had some success in the General Court — the European Union‘s second-highest court, which hears cases brought by companies against the commission.
In 2020, EU judges overturned a previous ruling by the commission that Apple had underpaid 13 billion euros in taxes to the Irish government. That case subsequently went to the European Court of Justice and is still slowly making its way through the legal process.
Apple’s latest court fight could be just as longwinded and take several years before any ruling is made by the General Court, which would also be open to appeal.
Beyoncé, Sony Music and others are facing a copyright lawsuit over her chart-topping hit “Break My Soul,” filed by a New Orleans group that says she sampled from a Big Easy rapper who had illegally lifted lyrics from their earlier song.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (May 22) in Louisiana federal court, members of Da Showstoppaz accuse Beyoncé (Beyoncé Knowles Carter) of infringing their 2002 song “Release A Wiggle” on “Break My Soul,” which spent two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022.
Rather than stealing their material directly, the group alleges that Beyoncé infringed their copyrights by legally sampling the 2014 song “Explode” by the New Orleans rapper Big Freedia. That track, they say, illegally borrowed several key lyrics from their song.
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“While Mrs. Carter … and others have received many accolades and substantial profits … Da Showstoppaz’s have received nothing—no acknowledgment, no credit, no remuneration of any kind,” the group’s attorneys wrote, also naming Big Freedia (Freddie Ross) as a defendant.
“Explode” was one of several high-profile samples on “Break My Soul,” which also heavily pulled from Robin S.‘s house song “Show Me Love.” After the release of the song, Big Freedia thanked “Queen Beyoncé” and said she had been “honored to be a part of this special moment.”
At the center of the new dispute is the phrase “release yo wiggle” and several related variants, which Da Showstoppaz call “unique phrases” that they coined in their song. They say Big Freedia — a well-known rapper in New Orleans’ bounce music scene — infringed their copyrights by using similar phrases in “Explode.”
“The infringing phrase ‘release yo’ wiggle’ and several other substantially similar phrases are featured prominently in the song and evenly spread out across Explode’s two-minute and forty-seven second runtime,” the group’s lawyers wrote. “Any reasonable person listening to ‘Release A Wiggle’ and ‘Explode’ would conclude that the songs are substantially similar.”
Such allegations could face long odds in court. Copyright law typically does not protect short, simple phrases, and a court could potentially dismiss the case on the grounds that Big Freedia was free to use such lyrics even if The Showstoppaz used them first.
But the group’s lawyers aren’t concerned, saying they “have a copyright to their unique and distinctive lyrics” that was clearly infringed by Big Freedia: “The coined term and phrase ‘release a/yo wiggle’ has now become closely synonymous with Big Freedia, thereby contributing to Big Freedia’s fame. However, Big Fredia did not compose or write the phrase, and Big Freedia never credited Da Showstoppaz as the source.”
According to the lawsuit, Da Showstoppaz first learned about Big Freedia’s song when they heard “Break My Soul.” They say they notified Beyoncé and others of the alleged infringement infringement last month, but that she has refused to take a license.
Reps for Beyoncé and Sony Music did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations.
Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough won a court order Wednesday blocking a looming foreclosure sale of the late singer’s historic Memphis home Graceland, after her attorneys argued that the bizarre effort to sell the home was “fraudulent.”
At a hearing in Memphis court, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins granted Keough’s request for a preliminary injunction that will block the mysterious foreclosure proceeding – initially set for Thursday – until he can rule on her case, according to court records reviewed by Billboard.
As reported by CNN, the judge said during the hearing that Keough would likely win her arguments — and that allowing the sale of the legendary mansion to go through in the meantime would cause her so-called irreparable harm.
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“The estate is considered unique under Tennessee law, and in being unique the loss of the real estate will be considered irreparable harm,” Jenkins said in the hearing.
In a case filed in Tennessee court last week, Keough alleged that the foreclosure was triggered by phony demands from a company called Naussany Investments – an entity that allegedly claims her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, borrowed $3.8 million and used the famed mansion as collateral.
The alleged loans are recorded in documents supplied by Naussany that feature Lisa Marie’s signature, but Keough’s lawyers say those records are “forgeries” and that she “did not in fact sign the documents.”
“These documents are fraudulent,” Keough’s attorneys write in their May 15 complaint, obtained by Billboard. “Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments.”
Naussany (Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC) could not immediately be located for comment on Wednesday’s order. An attorney for Keough also did not return a request for comment.
When Elvis died in 1977, his daughter Lisa Marie inherited his estate, including Graceland — a tourist mecca that pulls in millions of dollars a year in revenue. Until her death last year, she served as trustee of the Promenade Trust, an entity that controls the Memphis mansion. When she passed away, Keough assumed that same role and took control of the property.
According to the lawsuit, Naussany alleges it made the multi-million dollar loan to Lisa Marie in 2018 and recorded the transaction in Florida. But Keough’s lawyers say that Naussany is “a false entity created for the purpose of defrauding the Promenade Trust,” orchestrated by a man named Kurt Naussany who has sent “numerous emails seeking to collect the purported $3.8 million debt.”
Keough’s attorneys say the evidence “strongly indicates the documents are forgeries” – most notably, that the notary who allegedly signed off on the transaction has confirmed that she did not do so. “Indeed, she confirmed she has never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any document for her.”
Following Wednesday’s ruling, the case will now proceed toward more detailed litigation over the Keough’s allegations, and eventually toward a final ruling.
“War!” a singer once shouted. “What is it good for?” Well, that depends. In the music business, what can seem like grand ideological conflicts are usually just messy public negotiations over money. That doesn’t mean they’re not brutal, though. And sometimes the amounts at stake turn out to be very much worth fighting over.
The latest industry imbroglio is the National Music Publishers Association’s conflict with Spotify — call it the Battle of the Bundle — which could be worth about $150 million next year. On March 1, Spotify added access to audiobooks to its standard subscription to create a product that it says qualifies as a bundle under the terms of its 2022 legal settlement of the Phonorecords IV rate-setting procedure with the NMPA. Then, as the settlement says it can do, it allocates part of the subscription cost to the audiobook piece of the bundle in order to qualify for a lower payment to publishers.
Whether or not Spotify has a legitimate bundle, it sure has chutzpah — converting all of its U.S. subscribers to bundle customers is a bold move. Now it also has a war on its hands. Already, the NMPA has sent the company a cease and desist for alleged unlicensed content and the allied Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) filed a lawsuit about the bundling.
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This is only the response to the attack, though. By trying to cut payments to publishers, Spotify essentially attacked the NMPA, with which the streaming services settled, as well as its president and CEO David Israelite, who actually seems to enjoy this kind of combat. Just to be clear, I don’t think that Israelite literally loves fighting, but I do think he gets a certain satisfaction out of being good at it — he was a champion college debater and he’s a talented amateur poker player. He’s the kind of opponent who thinks strategically, sees several moves ahead and fights on a number of fronts at once.
The obvious fight will be the lawsuit filed by the MLC, which is likely to be long and expensive — think of it as a long slog of a ground war. The expense of that will be borne by the streaming services, though, since they fund the MLC’s operations under the provisions of the Music Modernization Act. But Israelite will attack on other fronts as well. The cease-and-desist letter marks the beginning of probing attacks, each one small. Spotify now licenses the works it uses but are there a few hundred uses of some works that might have slipped through the cracks? At a maximum of $150,000 per work in statutory damages for willful infringement, those oversights add up fast. Just as important, a slowdown in licensing for other uses, including video, could keep Spotify from moving forward with some of its plans to compete with Apple and Amazon.
Israelite will also move forward with what one might call sanctions, by trying to organize different parts of the music business against Spotify, much as Universal Music Group did with TikTok. Most years, the June NMPA Annual Meeting includes the music business version of Two Minutes Hate for an online company that’s not paying or underpaying rightsholders. That’s in less than a month. It’s hard to know how successful this will be, but it seems reasonable to assume that Spotify is going to have a much harder time booking acts to play its party during next year’s Grammy Week.
Israelite has also said he plans to take the fight to Capitol Hill with a legislative proposal to give publishers and songwriters more negotiating power. (If war is just the continuation of policy by other means, as Carl von Clausewitz has it, can’t the reverse also be true?) The odds of passing this legislation soon don’t seem all that high — right now the odds of passing any legislation soon don’t seem all that high — and if publishers and songwriters had the power to make it happen, they would have been trying already. But it starts a conversation that the NMPA wants to start, and it opens a front where the NMPA can fight at an advantage, partly because Israelite, a former Hill staffer, would fight on his home turf. Could the NMPA could get a hearing on the topic of songwriter pay that would embarrass Spotify? The company could argue that it needs margin relief, and it does, but how would that look on TV?
If this sounds like an incredibly elaborate and expensive way to figure out the definition of a bundle, you’re missing the point. Because it is, but also because no one cares. The point, for the NMPA, is to force Spotify to concede, through some combination of litigation, legislation and PR. Strong spotlights create a harsh glare. From Spotify’s perspective, looking for copyright infringement that fell through the cracks might seem like an aggressively-literal reading of the law. But isn’t an automatic bundle aggravatingly literal in its own right?
There’s also a theory that Israelite needs to get music publishers out of a situation he got them into, since he backed the 2022 settlement that allowed for bundles, but this is unfair. Under the decision in the rate-setting case before this, Phonorecords III, bundles were allowed and could be accounted for by subtracting the value of one from the total price, then using the remainder to calculate royalties. Under the Phonorecords IV settlement, bundles must be accounted for proportionally, which is far from ideal but a bit better. Obviously, Israelite and the NMPA thought they could get a better deal by settling the case than fighting it out in court, at great expense, and the NMPA board approved it. Arguably, they’d have ended up fighting either way.
That brings up another question: Phonorecords IV only covers the period through the end of 2027. Before that, both sides will go back to rate court, each more inclined to fight and less apt to settle. Whatever happens, the publishers will lose predictability and Spotify will look bad, especially compared to its rival streaming services. There could be a long, grinding Cold War that really will be good for nothing.
Singer-songwriter Vincent Mason, known for his viral hit “Hell Is a Dance Floor,” has signed a label deal with Interscope Records/UMG Nashville/Music Soup, the companies tell Billboard. Mason has been releasing music via Music Soup since his first release, so the deal marks a continuation of his work with that company. The Georgia native’s debut […]
An Earth, Wind & Fire tribute act will pay the legendary R&B group $750,000 in damages for using its trademarked name in ways that a federal judge called “deceptive and misleading.”
The payment, announced in a court filing Tuesday, will effectively end a year-long lawsuit in which the band alleged that the tribute act — “Earth, Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion” – infringed the trademark rights to the famous name by suggesting it was the real thing.
Earlier this year, the federal judge overseeing the case sided with Earth, Wind & Fire, ruling that the tribute act’s conduct had been “deceptive and misleading.” A trial had been scheduled to figure out how much Legacy Reunion would need to pay, but the two sides reached an undisclosed settlement on that question last week.
In Tuesday’s filing, the judge disclosed the total that Legacy Reunion had agreed to pay – $750,000, plus interest — a rare step following settlements, which are typically kept private. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
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Earth, Wind & Fire has continued to tour since founder Maurice White died in 2016, led by longtime members Philip Bailey, Ralph Johnson and White’s brother, Verdine White. The band operates under a license from an entity called Earth Wind & Fire IP, a holding company controlled by Maurice White’s sons that formally owns the rights to the name.
Last year, that company filed the current lawsuit, accusing Legacy Reunion of trying to trick consumers into thinking it was the real Earth, Wind & Fire. Though it called itself a “Reunion,” the lawsuit said the tribute band contained only a few “side musicians” who had briefly played with Earth, Wind & Fire many years ago.
“Defendants did this to benefit from the commercial magnetism and immense goodwill the public has for plaintiff’s ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ marks and logos, thereby misleading consumers and selling more tickets at higher prices,” the group’s lawyers wrote at the time.
Tribute acts — groups that exclusively cover the music of a particular band — are legally allowed to operate, and they often adopt names that allude to the original. But they must make clear that they are only a tribute band, and they can get into legal hot water if they make it appear that they are affiliated with or endorsed by the original.
Ruling on the case last month, Judge Federico A. Moreno said the evidence pointed “overwhelmingly” in the band’s favor. In particular, the judge cited angry social media posts and emails from fans who attended the “Reunion” shows because they thought it was the original band — proof of the kind of “actual confusion” that’s crucial evidence in a trademark lawsuit.
“It is not a far cry to think that an average consumer looking for an Earth, Wind & Fire concert would believe that they could acquire that experience from either plaintiff or defendants,” the judge wrote.
Following Tuesday’s order, the only remaining issue in the case is an injuction permanently banning Legacy Reunion from infringing the name. That issue will be subject to future rulings clarifying exactly what it will cover.