Business
Page: 175
K-pop giant HYBE purchased 868,948 shares of SM Entertainment, the company behind such acts as aespa and NCT 127, for approximately 104.3 billion won ($78 million) after SM founder Lee Soo-man exercised an option to sell the shares, HYBE announced in a Feb. 28 regulatory filing. The purchase concludes a transaction that briefly created a […]
Sammy Hagar has won a court order barring an allegedly unauthorized Hollywood location of his Cabo Wabo Cantina from continuing to use the chain’s name and branding while their dispute plays out before a judge.
In a preliminary injunction issued Tuesday (Mar. 5), a Los Angeles federal judge sided with Hagar’s company, Red Head Inc., and ruled franchisee Robert Azinian was prohibited from using “Cabo Wabo” trademarks for any purpose, including a new location on Hollywood Boulevard that sparked the rocker’s lawsuit.
When it comes to that particular eatery, Judge George H. Wu wrote that the injunction specifically bars Azinian from “representing to the public, in any way, that the Restaurant is an authorized Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurant.”
Trending on Billboard
Tuesday’s order came amid an escalating legal dispute between Hagar and his former business partner over Cabo Wabo Cantina — a brand of Mexican-themed eateries started by the Van Halen rocker in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in 1990 and later franchised into locations in Las Vegas and Hollywood.
Azinian’s company, which operated the Hollywood outpost for years, sued Hagar in September, claiming the singer had repeatedly breached their agreements and then unfairly tried to terminate the deal. The lawsuit claimed that the two sides had been at odds for more than a year over Azinian’s concerns that Hagar’s company was failing to support the Hollywood franchise. His lawsuit noted one such grievance was that the rock star himself was “not visiting and entertaining” at that location.
Hagar’s company (Red Head) hit back in January, filing a separate lawsuit in federal court that accused Azinian of infringing the Cabo Wabo trademarks. The case claimed that the partnership had clearly and lawfully been terminated because of Azinian’s own actions, but that Azinian had chosen to “surreptitiously” open a new location in Hollywood anyway.
Last month, Red Head asked for an immediate injunction — warning that Azinian was using Hagar’s branding but that the company had no oversight over the business, including the quality of food: “Every day that the Cabo Wabo Cantina at the new Hollywood location continues to operate under the ‘Cabo Wabo’ brand, it soils the name, reputation, and goodwill that Red Head has developed.”
In Tuesday’s order, Judge Wu was seemingly swayed by those arguments. He said Hagar’s company was likely to eventually win the lawsuit, and that it would face so-called “irreparable harm” if Azinian was able to continue using the Cabo Wabo Cantina branding while the case played out.
“Red Head has shown that it has suffered, and will continue to suffer, irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction — including harm to Red Head’s reputation and loss of goodwill, both of which are not fully remediated by damages,” Judge Wu wrote.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
When Condé Nast announced in January that it was folding the nearly 30-year-old music website Pitchfork into GQ, music fans and journalists decried the downsizing of a revered media outlet that gave voice to a diverse array of music genres, styles and artists that it praised and panned with its decimal system rating scale.
The shake-up also resulted in the departure of another woman from a leadership position in the music industry. Puja Patel, whom Condé Nast named Pitchfork’s first woman editor-in-chief in 2019, was among those laid off after presiding over an expansion both in staff and coverage. A veteran of Spin, which she also ran, and The Village Voice, Patel — the daughter of a Zimbabwean father and Indian mother — advocated for “more conversational and accessible writing,” ensuring that the publication’s tagline of being “the most trusted voice in music” rang true for a wider range of readers. She also empowered her staff to shape that coverage and widen its focus from the once-male-dominated space of indie-rock to include, for instance, regional rap, Latin and urbano music, while also supporting indie’s current generation of stars such as Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, Adrianne Lenker and HAIM.
In her first interview since leaving Pitchfork, Patel, 38, discusses her impact on the brand and why music journalism is here to stay.
Trending on Billboard
What were your goals as Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief?
I really knew what I wanted to do with it when I went there, and I think having some security of vision and a strong sense of the legacy of a publication — being able to keep that alive while also growing the thing — is the biggest task of anyone taking on an institution like Pitchfork. But I was mostly excited about taking an incredibly talented staff and [helping build] an even more expansively minded staff.
“I would hang out in my uncle’s records and tapes store while visiting my mom’s family in India. I grew up influenced by the mixtapes he’d make and send to her.”
Krista Schlueter
How did you see the impact of those changes during your time there?
The work of changing a place that is so beloved and such an institution is slow and purposeful. Often when someone new comes in, people expect some kind of bombshell explosive reinvention. The harder and more meaningful version of that is keeping the best parts and changing the parts that can be changed. The staff is very obviously more diverse than it has ever been. The taste on the site — it has gotten weirder and more engaged with popular music. And the readership has also become a lot more inclusive.
What were your ultimate goals for Pitchfork’s growth and evolution?
I wanted Pitchfork to be the destination for the discerning music listener — a place where you could discover an artist, listen to our staff debate and contextualize new releases; hear from the musicians themselves; see them live at one of our shows; and become part of our community online and in person. It was important to me to be deliberate about expanding the scope of our editorial while also advocating for brand expansions in audio, sponsored activations and consumer growth.
“It takes so much work and curation to build a unique festival,” Patel says of Pitchfork’s annual Chicago event. “The lanyards remind me of some of my favorite live-music moments and seeing our vision come to life.”
Krista Schlueter
Indie music is currently more diverse and dominated by women. What role did Pitchfork’s coverage play in that evolution?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Pitchfork is the reason why that has happened, but I think we did make a really pointed case in recent years to say, “We’re going to give this artist what might be their first interview for a major publication. And we might also go ahead and book them for the festival.” We’ve heard from labels that they have signed artists based on Pitchfork album reviews and that tickets to shows have sold out once [an act] got Best New Music or once Pitchfork gave a glowing recommendation. Part of the way we curated the festivals during my time at Pitchfork was to give at least one [artist] their first headlining set at a festival. During my time there, that was HAIM, Big Thief, Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. All folks who are vitally important to the conversation around music right now.
What role will the album review play going forward?
I find that music criticism and, specifically, the role of the album review is so important for anyone who cares about music. Every single day at midnight, we saw an uptick in traffic when we published our new album reviews. They are a way for fans to gauge their own understanding and opinion of how they feel. Beyond that, they contextualize an album against the artist’s own discography, explain the nuances of lyricism or that a [song sounds] intentionally familiar because it’s a callback to some other piece of art. I also really believe that the album review is a way for people to soundboard their own instincts. When they see, in Pitchfork’s case, a score, or they read someone who is talking about how a piece of music makes them feel, it’s a way for them to viscerally say, “I agree” or “I don’t agree” and explore why.
“I saw around 50 shows last year and always hold on to ticket stubs from special shows.”
Krista Schlueter
Why is it important to have a wider and diverse group of people pick Best New Music?
When I started at Pitchfork, I really made the idea of the album review scoring and consideration much more inclusive and collaborative. We would invite the entire staff to listen to an album. Bringing more people and more perspectives into the conversation opens up new windows and lanes to consider the piece of music, which always in my mind made us like it more. That’s not to say that there wasn’t an executive decision made from time to time.
With music publications shuttering or shrinking, does that create more space for independent voices to thrive?
It has been hard to watch the most iconic music publications slowly being pared down more and more. I’ve found a ton of inspiration and joy from the way that younger folks are using social media as a place to make music discovery and discourse accessible to more casual fans — especially as we’re seeing labels encouraging artists to take ownership of their narratives through some of the same formats. And while that sort of push from the music industry makes the industry ostensibly or optically less reliant on a journalist’s viewpoint, I still believe that journalism and arts writing is extremely valuable. At the very least, it acts as a historical record. So much of music right now is repurposed from other music, and knowing what you’re listening to and where it comes from is exceedingly valuable. I really believe that even very good marketing can’t replace very good music journalism.
Krista Schlueter
Who are your must-reads?
I want to shout out Mano Sundaresan’s blog, No Bells, which started as this tiny, friends-talking-about-rap thing but has evolved into a collection of some of the most interesting and spirited young people with a massive curiosity for new music. It’s done with the humor and levity and general alt-counterculture spirit that is missing from so much “capital s” serious writing.
How have you shaped the future of music journalism?
There tends to be a lot of acclaim awarded to people who are the first of their identity to step into some role that has historically been reserved for a certain other kind of person. And, honestly, almost everywhere I worked, I’ve been the first of some kind in my position: the first woman, the first person of color, the first Asian American. In most cases, I’m two of those things, sometimes all three. So you’re proving yourself to the systems that were made with other people in mind, and you are also bending those systems toward the future. You are de facto acting as a representative or a sounding board for people who might be or have felt underrepresented in the past. And just by way of that, you’re also reshaping the industry that you’re a part of.
This article originally appeared in the March 2, 2024 issue of Billboard.
On Friday (Feb. 23), the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) announced that they found $419.2 million in adjusted royalties for the U.S. mechanical royalty rate for streaming for 2018-2022, so when will the publishers and songwriters actually see the new influx of cash?
The MLC says it will begin releasing some of this money to rights holders in May and will continue the pay-out process steadily through the end of the year. This means that independent songwriters who are already signed up with the MLC will see some of these adjusted royalties hit their bank account as soon as May, but signed songwriters will likely see this reflected in the following quarter’s royalty statement from their publishers.
But the $419.2 million sum reported by the MLC is not all about to land in songwriters’ and publishers’ pockets – as much as one third of that amount might have already been paid out.
Trending on Billboard
The total sum owed to songwriters and publishers is divided into two types of royalties: mechanical and performance. There is $281.4 million in mechanical royalties to be paid out, and $137.8 million in performance, which is not paid out through the MLC but is paid directly to the PROs by the DSPs. However, some of the DSPs actually overpaid publishers for mechanical royalties during the period of 2018-2020 (also called the Phono III “historical unmatched period”) which cuts down the bonus actually owed to songwriters by $28.8 million in extra payments. Taking over-payments into account, the total amounts to around $390 million.
Sources in the U.S. PROs have told Billboard that they are surprised by the so-called performance royalties adjustment of $137.8 million because most of the money has already been paid out; or in the case of money received in the fourth quarter of 2023, will soon be paid out. Removing performance money from the total ultimately lowers the new adjusted royalties due to songwriters and publishers to $252.2 million.
Adjusted mechanical royalties from 2018-2020 that are matched by the digital services and/or their service providers will be distributed to publishers and songwriters by streamers directly, but because this is the period where some overpayments occurred, the bulk of these new adjusted mechanical royalties stem from underpayments made in 2021-2022, which will be paid out by the MLC. (The MLC was founded in 2021, and thus only works with money made after that point, plus unmatched and unclaimed funds before then).
Long Time Coming
Those who have been following the proceedings of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) — the government entity which regulates and determines how much publishers and songwriters get paid for mechanical royalties in the United States — have been waiting on this announcement for years.
The CRB reevaluates these royalty rates every five years, and for the five-year period called “Phonorecords III” or “Phono III,” which refers to 2018-2022, the board initially determined a new royalty rate for on-demand streaming in 2018 that was thought to be especially friendly to the music business. But some of the streaming services fought back with an appeal against that decision the following year, hoping to lower the rate and make it more comparable with the rates for the Phono II period (2013-2017).
That was the start of a lengthy and contentious legal battle between publishers, songwriters and streamers at the CRB, and it lasted until August 2023, when the Phono III rate was finally settled for good. The final rate for Phono III was not as favorable as the CRB’s 2018 initially determined rate, but it was still considered a win by the music business establishment.
Because of this multi-year back-and-forth, the streaming services were unsure of how much to pay publishers and songwriters for that entire five-year period. While they waited for more information from the CRB, some paid publishers at the Phono II rate and some paid publishers at the overturned 2018 Phono III rate, meaning some underpaid publishers and some overpaid. To make matters even more complicated, the way mechanical licensing on the publishing side worked systematically changed during Phono III due to the passage of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) of 2018.
The MMA helped alleviate what many believed was an inefficient mechanical licensing system. Previously, streaming services had to license each song on their platform individually, tracking down the proper parties – whether that be an indie songwriter or a publisher – and working with them directly. Due to the complexities of achieving this, hundreds of millions of mechanical streaming royalties for publishers and songwriters got stuck in limbo, forming what many have called “black box royalties.” (The MLC now uses the term “historical unmatched and/or unclaimed royalties.”)
The MMA set up a new licensing system for publishing mechanicals that covers all musical works under one simple blanket license. To administer and implement this new system, the MMA created the MLC, but the MLC did not start its operations until January 2021, meaning mechanicals earned during the first half of the Phono III period (2018-2020) were paid out the old fashioned way, while 2021-2022 mechanicals were paid to the MLC.
There are still more royalties to come: The MLC notes that several streaming services missed their deadline for reporting adjusted royalties and that it expects the total figure to increase by another $10 million to $15 million once those additional royalties come in. Every month that these services are delinquent on their payments, they incur a late fee tied to a percentage of the amount that is outstanding, though given most of those delinquent digital services are delinquent are smaller players, these late fees are not believed to amount to a meaningful number.
All in all, this means somewhere around $270 million in new adjusted mechanical royalty payments are coming to publishers and songwriters this year.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Earth, Wind & Fire wins its trademark lawsuit against a tribute band that used the group’s name without permission; Kanye West faces a copyright lawsuit from Donna Summer’s estate that claims he “shamelessly” copied her song; federal prosecutors accuse YoungBoy Never Broke Again of using drugs while under house arrest; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Will The Real Earth Wind & Fire Please Stand Up?
After just a year of litigation, Earth, Wind & Fire prevailed in its trademark lawsuit against a tribute act that called itself “Earth, Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion” – a use of the legendary R&B group’s name that a federal judge called “deceptive and misleading.”
Trending on Billboard
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.
The case against Legacy Reunion took that basic framework and added tricky questions. The tribute band really did feature musicians who had once performed with Earth, Wind & Fire, and they argued that they were legally allowed to tell that to fans. But Earth, Wind & Fire argued that those performers were just a few “side musicians” who had briefly played with the band, and that they had purposefully aimed to mislead consumers into thinking the primary players were also involved.
In a decision issued Monday, Judge Federico A. Moreno sided decisively with Earth, Wind & Fire, saying the evidence tipped “overwhelmingly” in the band’s favor. Go read why here.
Other top stories this week…
KANYE SUED OVER VULTURES 1 – The other shoe dropped. Two weeks after the estate of Donna Summer publicly accused Kanye West of illegally interpolating her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” in his “Good (Don’t Die),” the singer’s heirs filed a copyright lawsuit against the embattled rapper, accusing Ye of “arrogantly and unilaterally” using the song after he was explicitly refused a license. The track has already been pulled from streamers, but the estate said the lawsuit was about more than just that: “It is also about the rights of artists to decide how their works are used and presented to the public.”
HOUSE ARREST DRAMA – Federal prosecutors accused YoungBoy Never Broke Again (a.k.a. NBA YoungBoy) of violating the terms of his house arrest – a confinement that has now lasted more than two years while he awaits a trial on gun charges — by allegedly using unspecified drugs. More strangely, prosecutors specifically claimed that YoungBoy also told his supervising officers that he has “no intentions” of stopping doing so.
JAM MASTER JAY MURDER VERDICT – Following a three-week trial in Brooklyn, a federal jury found two New York City men guilty in the 2002 murder of Run-DMC‘s Jam Master Jay, finally resolving one of hip-hop’s long unsolved killings. After the convictions, Karl Jordan, Jr., 40, and Ronald Washington, 59, each face a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.
I DON’T (MAL)PRACTICE SANTERIA … King Holmes Paterno & Soriano fired back at a legal malpractice lawsuit filed earlier this year against the top music law firm by the band Sublime, arguing that its former clients had chosen “falsely and maliciously” to accuse the firm of wrongdoing in an “obvious and pathetic” attempt to avoid an unpaid legal bill totaling more than $100,000.
DIDDY ACCUSER CAN’T STAY ANONYMOUS – A federal judge ruled that an unnamed woman suing Sean “Diddy” Combs over allegations that he sex trafficked and “gang raped” her must reveal her identity as the case moves forward. Her lawyers argued that unmasking her would expose her to potential harm, but the judge ruled that allowing cases to proceed under a pseudonym in the U.S. court system was “the exception and not the rule.”
‘JEEN-YUHS’ LIBEL CASE DISMISSED – Dismissing an unusual defamation lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that a woman who once appeared “obviously intoxicated” in a Kanye West music video could not sue Netflix after the footage was used in the Kanye-focused documentary jeen-yuhs — even if she later got sober and “turned her life around.”
SONY SETTLES TERMINATION CASE – Sony Music reached a settlement to resolve a lawsuit filed by New York Dolls singer David Johansen and other artists in an effort to regain control of their masters. Combined with settlements last year in a similar lawsuit against Universal Music Group, the agreement will mark the final conclusion of closely-watched class-action litigation that claimed the two music giants were refusing to honor copyright law’s termination right when it came to recording artists.
APPLE’S HUGE EU FINE – The European Union fined Apple nearly $2 billion, claiming the tech giant broke the bloc’s competition laws by unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals like Spotify. Apple’s alleged actions – specifically, restricting how other music services tell their users about alternative pricing outside of an iOS app itself – led consumers to pay “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions,” EU regulators said. Apple vowed to appeal the ruling, which was sparked by a complaint by Spotify.
In February, Billy Joel released his first song in 17 years, the emotional “Turn the Lights Back On.” But for his publicist, Claire Mercuri, there is never an off cycle with the 74-year-old legend.
Mercuri, who founded Claire Mercuri Public Relations in 2010, has represented Joel for more than 25 years. They began working together when Mercuri was at Columbia Records, where she rose to vp of media and also executed campaigns for veteran stars such as Bob Dylan, Bette Midler and Ricky Martin. In addition to Joel, her clients include his ex-wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, and their daughter, Alexa Ray, as well as actresses Lorraine Bracco and Elizabeth Hurley.
A Brooklyn native, Mercuri scored her first music industry job in the 1990s as a personal assistant to KISS’ Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. “They were wonderful to me — and quite generous,” she says. “I still love them both.”
Trending on Billboard
Developing long-term relationships with clients past and present is part of what makes the job so meaningful. Joel manages himself, and Mercuri is part of his tight inner circle, many of whom have also been with him for decades. “There is no other artist quite like Billy Joel… [He] remains very much at the top of his game,” she says. “Music should enrich your soul and challenge you to think in new ways. Billy has done this as well or better than any other artist I know.”
Now, as the targeted press campaign Mercuri orchestrated around Joel’s new single — which included stops at The Howard Stern Show and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — wanes, the next several months promise to keep her busy. On April 14, CBS will air a special capturing Joel’s 100th consecutive performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden as he nears the end of his historic 10-year run of monthly shows at the vaunted venue this summer. Alongside those performances, Joel will co-headline stadium shows with buddies like Sting, Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks. As Mercuri says, “Billy is always in the conversation.”
This story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
TIDAL will combine its HiFi Plus and HiFi tiers as of April 10. The benefits of the pricer HiFi Plus plan will now be available to those on the more affordable HiFi plans; the single tier will be simply dubbed TIDAL. An individual TIDAL plan will cost $10.99 a month. HiFi Plus used to cost […]
Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group continues to partner with artists with deep-bench catalogs — announcing on Tuesday (March 5) a deal with Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry to acquire half of the suave auteur’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights. The company, which did not disclose financial details of the deal, said it will “develop and expand the renowned artist’s musical legacy to new generations of fans.”
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The deal spans Ferry’s work with glam-turned-sophisti-pop band Roxy Music and his expansive solo career, which combined has yielded 24 albums over 50-plus years. The through-line with Roxy Music is that Ferry wrote almost every one of the group’s songs, from 1972’s art-rock debut to the group’s eighth and final album, the pop-sheened Avalon, at times co-writing with fellow longtime members Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera. The band’s best known songs include “Love Is the Drug,” “All I Want Is You,” “Virginia Plain,” “Dance Away,” “Avalon” and radio staple “More Than This.”
Trending on Billboard
Ferry’s solo career ran parallel with his band work, starting with 1973’s These Foolish Things all the way to 2018’s Bitter-Sweet. In the middle there he scored his only UK No. 1 with 1985’s Boys and Girls, which also features one Ferry’s biggest hits in America, “Slave to Love.” (The track was further immortalized when he performed it at Live Aid, with an assist from David Gilmour.)
As for accolades, Ferry was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 as a member of Roxy Music, and he was awarded a CBE in 2011 for his contribution to British music. Iconic president Jimmy Edwards calls Ferry a “true musical pioneer who blended art, fashion, and rock & roll into a captivating and enduring sound.”
At Iconic, which was co-founded by Azoff and Oliver Chastan, Ferry joins a hall-of-fame roster of acts that includes Rod Stewart, The Beach Boys, Cher, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker and CSN bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, among others.
Ferry said, “I’m pleased to be working with everyone at Iconic on finding new ways to share my music with the world. I’m excited to see what possibilities unfold.”
SESAC Music Group today (March 5) announced a deal with the Korean Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (KOSCAP) that calls for KOSCAP to represent SESAC’s repertoire in Korea and for SESAC-owned Audiam to administer KOSCAP’s publishing rights in the U.S.
The deal makes SESAC one of the first big collective management organizations (CMOs) to move its rights out of the established Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) to KOSCAP, a competitor that the government approved in 2014 to increase competition in the market. KOSCAP will represent SESAC’s online and offline performing rights in Korea, and the catalog of the Harry Fox Agency, the SESAC Music Group’s mechanical rights entity, will follow next year.
The Audiam deal calls for that company, which the SESAC Music Group bought in 2021, to collect performing, mechanical and other audiovisual rights in the U.S. on behalf of KOSCAP.
Trending on Billboard
Charles Park
Although this might seem like just another deal in the alphabet soup world of collective rights management, it highlights the growing competition among CMOs – and how that is leading to different kinds of international deals. In October, SESAC made a deal to have its offline performing rights in Italy managed by Soundreef, a private company just over a decade old, instead of the traditional society Italian collecting society, SIAE.
“Why did we switch?” Alex Wolf, president of international of the SESAC Music Group, told Billboard about the KOSCAP deal. “We’re convinced about the competence and the responsiveness of the management and we’re convinced that we will increase our revenues. This is a bet on the future.”
Just a decade ago, only a few markets had competition among CMOs, which didn’t compete with one another across borders. Since 2014, though, when the European Union passed the Directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing, European societies have had to compete for online rights in the EU, and many other countries have opened up as well. This has led to competition among established organizations, as well as new companies like Soundreef – both to represent writers and publishers and to make deals with foreign CMOs.
“It’s a great honor to partner with SESAC, a global leader with a world-class catalog and one of the premier Performing Rights Management organizations in the world, along with Audiam’s innovative technology to administer our catalog in the US,” KOSCAP COO Charles Park said in the press release announcing the deal.
Top music law firm King Holmes Paterno & Soriano is firing back at a legal malpractice lawsuit filed by the band Sublime, arguing that the group has “falsely and maliciously” sued to get out of paying their hefty legal bills.
A month after Sublime sued its former attorneys — Howard King, Peter Paterno and Joseph M. Carlone — over allegations of a “pattern of self-dealing,” the firm filed a scathing countersuit Monday (Mar. 4). In it, they argue that the band still owes the firm $100,000 in fees after abruptly ending a decades-long attorney-client relationship.
“While Sublime had the right to terminate its lawyers at any time, it has no right to sidestep its responsibility to pay fees it incurred,” the firm wrote. “Yet, in an obvious and pathetic attempt to do exactly that, plaintiffs, presumably at the prodding of reputationally challenged new advisors, have cynically elected to file a trumped-up preemptive malpractice suit falsely and maliciously accusing the law firm of conflicts of interest they claim caused them unspecified damages.”
Trending on Billboard
The filing from King Holmes aimed to rebut many of Sublime’s specific allegations, including the band’s accusation that the firm steered it into a merchandise deal without disclosing that the company was another one of the firm’s clients — a move Sublime claimed cost the band millions.
In Monday’s filing, the firm said it had disclosed that potential conflict of interest to the band members and that they had consented to the arrangement. King Holmes said it even invited the band members’ personal attorneys to be involved in the negotiations to avoid any doubt.
“At the request of Sublime and its partners, KHPS helped secure a state-of-the-art merchandising agreement with one of the world’s few most preeminent music merchandisers, which also was Sublime’s merchandiser of choice,” the firm wrote. “That merchandiser paid and continues to pay Sublime higher royalties on a much broader range of products and with other more favorable terms than its main competitor offered.”
King Holmes Paterno & Soriano touts an eye-popping list of music industry clients, from Dr. Dre to Pharrell Williams to Blink-182 to the Tupac Shakur estate. King famously represented Williams and Robin Thicke in the “Blurred Lines” copyright case; Paterno represented Metallica in its legal battles against Napster over internet piracy.
But in late January, Sublime boldly announced that it was no longer one of those clients by filing a malpractice lawsuit. In it, the band claimed that the firm had “failed in their ethical, fiduciary, and lawyerly obligations to protect the interests of their clients,” including by “playing both sides” on multiple occasions.
“Behind their façade as music industry power brokers, KHPS’ number one priority was not their client Sublime’s legal and business goals, but rather KHPS’ own financial and business interests,” the band’s new attorneys wrote. “Despite holding themselves out to the public as highly experienced in the business side of music, … defendants engaged in a pattern of self-dealing that was rife with potential and actual, conflicts of interest.”
The case was filed by Sublime’s surviving members, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh, as well as by the widow and son of Bradley Nowell, Sublime’s original lead singer who died of a drug overdose in 1996. The band’s corporate entities — Sublime Merchandising LLC and Jake And Troy Brand LLC — were also named as plaintiffs.
But in Monday’s countersuit, the firm said it had “diligently and loyally represented Sublime and its business interests” for decades, an arrangement from which the band “benefited greatly.” King Holmes said it had “successfully used its music industry knowledge and experience” to aid the band on a wide range of business ventures, from music deals to merchandising to film projects: “KHPS’ work empowered Sublime and its partners to preserve and capitalize on their most valuable assets, the band’s music and trademark.”
The firm went even further, suggesting that Sublime had perhaps been motivated by “predatory new advisors” to file baseless allegations in court.
“A cursory investigation done in good faith, had plaintiffs or their advisors cared to make the minimal effort needed to conduct one before pulling the litigation trigger, would have demonstrated what plaintiffs and their advisors already knew or should have known — that nothing could be further from the truth,” the firm wrote.
In technical terms, Monday’s filing accused Sublime and its surviving members of breach of contract and other related violations, saying they had violated their agreement by failing to pay the firm $108,852 in past-due legal bills. The case will be litigated alongside the original allegations filed in January.
An attorney for Sublime did not immediately return a request for comment.