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Piping-hot R&B singer and songwriter Coco Jones signs with Warner Chappell Music, just days out from the 66th annual Grammy Awards where she’s nominated in five categories.
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Announced today (Jan. 30), Jones strikes an exclusive publishing agreement with the major music publisher. “Music has been a constant in my life and the motivation that has anchored me since the very beginning,” she comments in a statement. “Discovering a team at Warner Chappell that shares that same passion and understands my voice and vision is very special to me.”
Born in South Carolina and raised in Lebanon, Tennessee, Jones is all-round entertainer. At age 12, she embarked on the path to tween stardom with roles on Disney Channel shows and films like So Random! and Let It Shine; appeared in the sitcom Good Luck Charlie; and more recently, she won the role of Hilary Banks on Peacock’s Fresh Prince reboot, Bel-Air.
In 2022, she signed with High Standardz/Def Jam Recordings, and the following year landed her breakthrough with the RIAA platinum-certified, Billboard Hot 100 hit single, “ICU.”
“Coco is a natural superstar,” comments Xavier Champagne, senior director, urban A&R, WCM, following the signing. “She’s a top-tier performer and has a special talent for songwriting that connects deeply with her fans.”
Now, industry plaudits await. At the 2024 Grammys this Sunday (Feb. 4), Jones will compete for best R&B song and best R&B performance (both for “ICU”), best new artist, best R&B album for What I Didn’t Tell You (Deluxe) and best traditional R&B performance for her collaboration with Babyface, “Simple.”
“Coco Jones has one of the most unique voices out there, and it’s great to see her having her moment as both a songwriter and artist,” enthuses Ryan Press, president, North America, WCM. “She’s helping pave an entirely new era of R&B and her hustle and work ethic have led to a year of breakthroughs. Now let’s go win some Grammys.”
Elon Musk’s social media platform X has restored searches for Taylor Swift after temporarily blocking users from seeing some results as pornographic deepfake images of the singer circulated online. Searches for the singer’s name on the site Tuesday turned up a list of tweets as normal. A day earlier, the same search resulted in an […]
Anthem Entertainment has acquired select copyrights in the catalogs of hit songwriter Luke Laird and Nashville-based music company Creative Nation, which is led by Luke and music industry executive (and Luke’s wife) Beth Laird. In an Instagram post, Beth Laird noted that Anthem has acquired the released songs in the Creative Nation catalog, alongside Luke Laird’s released songs.
The Creative Nation catalog includes more than 60 radio singles, including numerous chart-topping hits such as Sam Hunt’s “Hard to Forget” and Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” and “Adore You,” as well as songs recorded by Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, The Highwomen, Tim McGraw, Sara Bareilles, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Jordan Davis and Kacey Musgraves.
Pennsylvania native Luke Laird is a three-time Grammy-nominated songwriter, as well as the Academy of Country Music’s songwriter of the year in 2015. He has earned 24 chart-topping songs and six CMA Triple Play awards (with each CMA Triple Play honor recognizing three No. 1 songs within a one-year span). Among his hit songs are Kacey Musgraves’ “Space Cowboy,” Eric Church’s “Drink in My Hand,” Kenny Chesney’s “American Kids,” Carrie Underwood’s “Temporary Home” and Tim McGraw’s “Diamond Rings and Old Barstools.”
Creative Nation was founded in 2011 and works in publishing, management, artist development and records. The company supports a roster that includes singer-songwriter Kassi Ashton, “Pontoon” songwriter Barry Dean, “Humble and Kind” songwriter Lori McKenna, “Riser” songwriter Steve Moakler, Travis Wood and Ben West.
“Luke and I have worked hard to sign quality people and songwriters and continue to commit to that,” Creative Nation co-founder/CEO Beth Laird said in a statement. “We are excited to announce that Anthem Music Publishing purchased Creative Nation’s exploited songs from the past 11 years. I’m grateful to Jason Klein, Sal Fazzari, Andrew Jamal, Adrian Battiston, and Gilles Godard, and everyone at Anthem who worked with our team (Derek Crownover, Megan Pekar, John Rolfe, Chris King and Kella Farris) for making this such a smooth and transparent process. It’s great to know our past copyrights are being taken care of by a great publisher and we are excited to continue building Creative Nation.”
Luke Laird added in a statement, “Over the years I have been fortunate to have songs recorded by so many incredible artists. I’m grateful that a company as renowned as Anthem sees the value in these songs, and I’m excited my exploited copyrights have been sold to Anthem alongside the Creative Nation songs.”
Anthem Music Publishing Nashville president Gilles Godard added, “I have watched Luke and Beth build a world class catalog over the last decade with iconic copyrights and amazing diversity from country to global pop hits. It is an honor and a privilege to now represent this impressive legacy body of work.”
Anthem Entertainment has deepened its country music interests in recent years, including acquiring a majority share of singer-songwriter Jordan Davis’s publishing catalog last year.
As part of our continuing efforts to serve the music industry and its creators, Billboard Pro now features a music industry events calendar for readers.
The calendar will act as music’s most complete summary major national and international industry events, from conferences to festivals to networking mixers and more. Just as Billboard is music’s must-read source for news, charts and analysis, now it also is the go-to for business happenings.
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Dec. 4–10 – XLive (Las Vegas)
Want your event listed? For more information contact joe.maimone@billboard.com.
Artist development isn’t dead, but it sure has changed. Two decades ago, a 20-something jazz musician named Norah Jones became a breakout star for Blue Note Records, a traditional route to stardom when people still bought CDs and social media didn’t exist. Last year’s breakout jazz artist, Laufey, cultivated a fan base on TikTok and posts sheet music for her songs online so fans can download it before the recordings come out.
To AWAL CEO Lonny Olinick, Laufey’s success is a sign of the times. The Icelandic singer built an online following by herself, but she needed a team to develop her career and handle marketing and promotion logistics. Her second AWAL album, Bewitched, topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts in September. “We’re seeing this real inflection point where artists are starting to, with their own teams and then between the team and AWAL, realize that there are no barriers in what can be achieved,” says Olinick, who earned an MBA from Stanford Business School and worked at consulting firm Bain & Company before joining Kobalt in 2016.
Artists such as JVKE, whose “Golden Hour” reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, and Mercury Prize winner Little Simz have used AWAL to find success outside of the major-label system. AWAL’s services-focused approach is becoming the norm as major labels increasingly provide distribution, marketing, promotion, accounting and even financing without needing to own the rights to artists’ recordings as part of standard deals. Sony Music acquired AWAL in 2022 to complement its labels and its distribution business, The Orchard. Universal Music Group is also building its own artist services business, through a revamped Virgin Label Group.
A pingpong table that Olinick says “we have artists sign when they’re in the L.A. office.”
Maggie Shannon
Paradoxically, services-based music companies still have to do many of the same things as traditional labels — just with different deals. Only recently, Olinick says, has the 16-year-old company truly met that challenge. “Last year and the year before were probably the first years where we fully realized that vision, where I’m confident that we can do all of the things that exist in the traditional world.”
Most people in the music industry understand record labels and distributors, but services-based companies are a bit harder to get. How would you describe AWAL to the uninitiated?
The most important part of music in my mind is artist development. You try to find artists who have great music, compelling stories and a work ethic and try to help them forge their own path. And throughout history, the best artists have been artists who don’t fit in a box, and the path that they take is completely bespoke. And you can’t do it again the same way. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that’s the best in the world at doing that — at finding outlier artists who have great stories to tell and helping them grow. You need a great marketing team, a great digital marketing team, radio, synch and branding — all the things that exist in the traditional world. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that can do all those things, just with a different business model to keep the economics in favor of the artist.
You don’t have an everyone’s-welcome model — you choose who you want to work with. How do you do that?
We’re very opinionated about music. It’s really important as a company to have that creative, A&R-driven aesthetic. There’s three dimensions to it in my mind. There’s the music: Does the music speak to people? Two, is there a story to be told, and does this person want to communicate something beyond just the music that’s interesting and compelling? And three, does the person have a work ethic? Being successful in music requires relentlessly hard work on all sides.
“I love art of all types and take a lot of inspiration from culture,” Olinick says. “These books cover amazing music, art and sneaker culture.”
Maggie Shannon
Tell me about the staff on the creative side, as well as the administrative one.
We do everything, but the majority of our staff is focused on A&R, marketing and creative. That’s where we think we can be different and where we can help our artists tell stories. There’s 180 people across 14 offices. It’s run as a global company. If we find a record in Sweden, the U.S. company can jump on it, or the U.K. company or the Canadian one. Everyone is working collaboratively to try to do the best they can for the artist. And in each of those offices, we have traditional marketing, digital marketing, synch, brand partnerships, publicity — we basically do everything that an artist needs largely in-house. And then to the extent that we feel like we need something beyond what our 180 people can do, we will partner.
What’s the financial commitment when you work with an artist? Are you always writing a check?
It depends. Some of the deals are unfunded. We’re fortunate to be a part of Sony, so if it makes sense and we believe in the opportunity, there’s no check we couldn’t write if it made sense. But each deal is bespoke for the artist. We try to put as much money into marketing as we possibly can because we believe that that’s the thing we can do that hopefully makes a difference.
This “thing with eyes is something my son made for me,” Olinick says. The feeling of being watched “keeps me motivated every day. The small trophy is from our office awards for ‘Person on the Phone the Most.’ I take great pride in that.”
Maggie Shannon
Sony acquired AWAL in 2022 and it already owned The Orchard. How do the two work together?
The whole Sony ecosystem makes a ton of sense, and AWAL and The Orchard are great examples of that. The Orchard is best in class at supporting record companies. And if you look at the scale at which they operate, and the quality of what they do on behalf of labels, there’s just no one who’s doing that kind of work. It’s an incredible team led by Brad [Navin] and Colleen [Theis], who are just incredible executives. I look at us in a very similar way: the best at doing artist development in this nontraditional way. Being able to work together on tools and distribution is a great advantage for our clients and for The Orchard’s clients.
Some artists have gone from majors or big indies to AWAL, including Nick Cave, Cold War Kids and Jungle. Have some artists gone from AWAL to majors?
Our job is to develop the best artists in the world. And I think if we do that — especially if we do that at any scale — there’s going to be certain artists where the deal offered by a major is really compelling. Early on, we saw a lot more artists who would migrate and go do another deal. We developed Steve Lacy, Omar Apollo and Kim Petras — artists who have gone on and had real success at majors.
“The Marshall cabinet is actually a refrigerator,” Olinick says. “My office tends to have items from our artists, but the exception is that Beatles collectible — I don’t have anything to do with The Beatles, but it reminds me to aspire to work with the greatest artists.”
Maggie Shannon
You’ve had some time to integrate into Sony. How has being part of this larger company changed your life as a CEO?
Anytime you go into these things you have aspirations for what it will be. At the same time, [merger and acquisition] deals tend not to be what you expected them to be. People think that I’m sometimes saying the company line, and it couldn’t be further from the truth: The experience has been phenomenal. That comes down to two dimensions. Rob [Stringer, Sony Music CEO] is just an incredible music executive who comes from an A&R perspective. Being a part of a company where he sets the tone that music is at the center of everything you do has made us a better company. And because of that, it has basically been, “Here’s all these resources that Sony has that you can take advantage of, but continue to run the company the way you have because we’ve had tons of success doing it.” It has all been additive.We have more resources to invest. We have better technology. We can partner with Sony in certain markets where it makes sense. We’re out there building local businesses in Spain, Brazil, Nigeria and India. The Sony team has been incredibly supportive. Everyone sees that this is a meaningful part of the business and because AWAL is so music-centered and so is Sony, there’s just a lot of mutual respect and collaboration. It has been nothing short of reenergizing in an already energized business.
The music business is undergoing some contraction with layoffs and consolidation. Do you foresee laying people off, or are you hiring?
We’re actively hiring. We hired a head of hip-hop and R&B last year in Norva Denton. We hired a senior vp of A&R in Chris [Foitel]. We hired Cami [Operé], who’s our publicist. We just hired a new CFO [Sumit Chatterjee]. We’ve hired in Spain, Brazil and Nigeria. We bought a company in India [digital distribution firm OKListen]. So, we’re actively in the market because the business continues to grow. We had our best year last year; we’ll have our best year this year.
As the music industry prepares to gather next week in Los Angeles for discussions on how to address climate change within the sector, a new initiative to better understand the scope of the challenge is underway.
On Monday (Jan. 29), MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative announced that it’s launching a comprehensive study of the live music industry’s carbon footprint. Co-funded and supported by Warner Music Group, Live Nation and Coldplay, the report will suggest solutions to reduce the environmental impact of live music events across all venue sizes, from, a statement says, “pubs and clubs to stadiums.”
Focused on the U.S. and U.K. markets, the partnership will begin with an initial research phase, with the resulting Assessment Report of Live Music and Climate Change expected to be complete by this July.
The report aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between live music and climate change, to identify key areas where the industry and concertgoers can make tangible improvements to reduce emissions, to foster positive outcomes and to provide a detailed analysis of the latest developments in green technology and sustainable practices.
“I’m delighted that we will be working with our partners to co-create recommendations for a sustainable future in music,” says Professor John E. Fernandez, director of the ESI at MIT. “As well as jointly funding the research, I applaud the spirit of openness and collaboration that will allow us to identify specific challenges in areas such as live event production, freight and audience travel, and recommend solutions that can be implemented across the entire industry to address climate change.”
Coldplay has also committed to manufacturing all physical records for their forthcoming 2024 album from recycled plastic bottles, which a statement claims is the first initiative of its kind.
Coldplay is a longtime sustainability leader, with the band saying last June that its Music Of The Spheres tour has so far produced 47% fewer CO2e emissions than its previous tour and that it’s planted five million trees to date.
With fan travel being one of the biggest carbon emissions drivers in the music industry, in 2022 the band partnered with Live Nation and major public transportation providers to offer fans free or discounted rides to foster more sustainable travel. A study found that this initiative fostered a 59% average increase in public transport ridership on show days across four U.S. cities.
A contentious lawsuit over Jimi Hendrix’s music is going to trial, after a London judge ruled that the heirs of his former bandmates could continue to sue Sony Music over the rights to three classic albums.
The estates of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell say they own a share of the rights to three albums created by the trio’s Jimi Hendrix Experience, and they’ve been battling in court for more than two years to prove it.
Sony had argued that the case should be dismissed because Redding and Mitchell both signed away their rights in the early 1970s shortly after Hendrix died, but a judge on London’s High Court ruled Monday that the dispute – over “arguably the greatest rock guitarist ever” — must be decided at trial.
“My overall conclusion is that the claims in respect of copyright and performers’ property rights survive and should go to trial,” Justice Michael Green wrote in his ruling, obtained by Billboard. The judge wrote that Redding and Mitchell’s heirs had “a real prospect of succeeding” on their argument that the decades-old releases “do not provide a complete defence” for Sony.
It’s unclear when the trial will take place. A rep for Sony did not immediately return a request for comment on the court’s decision. An attorney for the Hendrix estate, which is not formally a party to the U.K. case, did not immediately return a request for comment.
In a statement to Billboard, Redding and Mitchell’s attorneys said the ruling would mean “we can hopefully obtain some justice for the families” of the two musicians. “No one is denying that Jimi Hendrix was one of, if not, the greatest guitarist of all time. But he didn’t make his recordings alone, and they could not have achieved any success without the contributions of Noel and Mitch.”
Hendrix teamed up with Redding and Mitchell in 1966 to form the Experience, and the trio went on to release a number of now-iconic songs before Hendrix’s death, including “All Along The Watchtower,” which spent nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 and peaked at No. 20.
The current fight kicked off in 2021, when Redding and Mitchell’s heirs sent a letter in the U.K. claiming they own a stake in Hendrix’s music and arguing that they’re owed millions in royalties. Hendrix’s own estate and Sony responded a month later by preemptively suing in New York federal court, aiming to prove they were in sole control of the music. Redding and Mitchell’s heirs then filed their own case against Sony in British court.
The transatlantic dispute centers on agreements that Redding and Mitchell signed in New York in 1973 to resolve litigation after Hendrix died suddenly at the age of 27. In the settlement, the two men agreed not to sue Jimi’s estate and any record companies distributing his music in return for one-time payments — $100,000 paid to Redding and $247,500 to Mitchell.
Sony and the Hendrix estate have argued in court filings that those “broad releases” prohibit Redding and Mitchell’s heirs from making any legal claim to the band’s music. The heirs, on the other hand, say the two men died in poverty and that they’re legally entitled under U.K. law to a cut of the lucrative Hendrix Experience music they helped create.
On Monday, Justice Green did not rule on that core dispute, saying he “cannot decide those contentious issues” about the power of the release agreements signed by Redding and Mitchell. Instead, he ruled simply that there are “sustainable arguments on such issues that will have to be decided at a trial.”
In statement, a rep for the Redding and Mitchell estates said they looked forward to the trial. “Noel and Mitch died in penury despite being two thirds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and owning the copyright in the recordings jointly with Jimi,” Edward Adams said. “We see our case as carrying a torch for Noel, in particular, who spent over three decades seeking justice.”
The trial will come after years of jockeying over whether the dispute should be heard first in American or British courts. In May, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the English litigation could take precedence, citing the fact that it had kicked off nearly a month earlier than the American case, and that a British appeals court had already ruled that their case could move forward. The U.S. case, filed in Manhattan federal court, is currently paused.
Go to any given spa or yoga studio and you’re likely to hear music or soundscapes designed to help you relax. Sometimes the sound is of a pan flute, or soft rain. Most often, though, you’ll hear some form of ambient music: gentle, often instrumental “chill out” productions meant to enhance the serene atmosphere.
Now, two longstanding electronic music industry executives, in partnership with leaders in the wellness and music audio technology spaces, are getting into the genre through a new ambient label: Sacred Society Music Group.
The label is a project of founders Bradley Roulier, who also co-founded the electronic music digital download store Beatport in 2004, and Barbie Beltran, a wellness expert and co-founder of a Denver wellness center also called Sacred Society. Co-founders include Paul Morris — the founder of electronic agency AM Only, which was acquired by Paradigm in 2017, and Tiësto’s longtime manager — and Dolby Atmos specialist Adelio Lombardi. Matthew Evertsen handles A&R and special projects.
With Sacred Society, the label’s founders are aiming to heighten the quality and effectiveness of ambient music by producing its entire catalog in Dolby Atmos — a move they believe can increase the well-being of listeners who use the genre for relaxation, sleep and various wellness practices.
“As label owners, we felt we could make this music that is part of life extraordinary,” Roulier tells Billboard.
Based in Denver, the label launched this week with a collection of more than 55 tracks and over six hours of immersive content. A track named “Ancient Chant” features hand drum, a rain stick and lapping water with various bells and a voice repeating, “You have it all inside.” A meditation track, “Inside The Womb Of The Earth,” is precisely 11 minutes and 11 seconds long.
This music, organized by more than two dozen tags to help users find ambient sounds best suited for certain activities and times of day, is currently available on Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music. (It’s not yet on Spotify or YouTube, as those platforms don’t currently support Dolby Atmos.) So far the label features music from nine contributing musicians including Dynasty Electric, Matthew James Kelly, Cobane Ivory, Sean Stolar and Roulier himself, with all artists appearing under the “Sacred Society” name.
While a barrage of ambient music already exists on the market (a search for “ambient” on Spotify results in upwards of 30 playlists), the Sacred Society founders believe their output is distinguished by its production in Dolby Atmos. The spatial audio technology adds dimension and depth to music and can only be made, and played, through specialized equipment. The label founders claim that listeners will benefit from this technology; as Roulier says, by helping them “explore meditative and ambient soundscapes more deeply than [they] ever thought possible.”
Sacred Society Music Group’s side3 studio in Denver, Colo./Photo Courtesy Sacred Society Music Group
Sacred Society music is produced exclusively at Denver’s Dolby Atmos-equipped side3 studio, which was built by Lombardi. While construction of the studio required, as a Sacred Society rep says, “significant financial investment,” it was more intensive to set up the precise technical specifications necessary to record in Dolby Atmos.
But this investment was worth it, Lombardi tells Billboard, because “adding immersive audio to this [music] experience elevates it significantly.”
This may all sound like a niche endeavor, but there’s potential to tap a wide audience given how many people engage in wellness practices at home and how often this music is licensed for use in facilities like spas and yoga studios. Roulier says the group “wants our music to be widely available within the wellness space globally,” and has discussed launching a subscription service tailored for practitioners, hotels and spas that would allow them to use Sacred Society content commercially.
The demand for ambient music is also expected to grow; the label cites a report that says the genre was valued at $1.8 billion in 2022, with that number expected to rise to $3.21 billion by 2030. The demand for Dolby Atmos is also expanding, with the label citing a statistic that 90% of Apple Music users have engaged with the format, as well as that plays for music available in spatial audio have more than tripled in the past two years.
All this work is ultimately meant to deliver on the founders’ goal of sharing the holistic benefits embedded in the genre.
“I have always enjoyed ambient music, and I truly believe that music has the power to heal,” Morris tells Billboard. “With anxiety, depression, and mental health problems having escalated to unprecedented levels in our society, I can’t think of a more fitting time for the launch of Sacred Society Music. I have made a living from music my entire career and, by helping to put this music out into the world, I feel I am giving back in a small way through a medium that has given so much to me.”
“It’s about providing a unique and serene musical journey for our listeners, regardless of market trends,” Beltran adds. “We aim to offer a path to serenity, self-discovery and inner harmony through the transformative power of sound.”
Two men accused of murdering Run-DMC‘s Jam Master Jay will finally head to trial Monday (Jan. 29), more than 21 years after the rap icon’s killing.
Karl Jordan, Jr. and Ronald Washington, who were charged with Jay’s long-unsolved 2002 murder in 2020, will stand trial at a Brooklyn federal courthouse. Prosecutors say the two men killed Jay as payback after a failed cocaine deal; if convicted, they each face the possibility of life in prison.
Following the selection of a jury last week, opening statements are slated to begin at 9:30 a.m. Monday. The trial, before U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, is expected to run for a month.
Run-DMC, a trio consisting of Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, is widely credited as one of the most influential early acts in hip-hop history. The trio’s 1985 release, King of Rock, was hip-hop’s first platinum album, and the group’s 1986 cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jay’s shocking 2002 killing had long been one of hip hop’s famous cold cases, joining the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. Though witnesses were in the room when the murder happened, and police generated a number of leads, no charges were filed until August 2020, when prosecutors finally unveiled the case against Washington and Jordan.
According to charging documents and statements by prosecutors, Washington and Jordan broke into Jay’s studio on the night of Oct. 30, 2002. Washington allegedly initially pointed a gun at another individual in the studio; as he was doing so, Jordan allegedly fired two shots, one of which struck Jay in the head at close range, killing him almost instantly.
The motive for the killing was allegedly a drug deal gone bad. Prosecutors say Jay had arranged to purchase 10 kilograms of cocaine that would be distributed in Maryland by Washington, Jordan and others. When Jay backed out of the deal, prosecutors say, the two decided to kill him.
“The defendants allegedly carried out the cold-blooded murder of Jason Mizell, a brazen act that has finally caught up with them thanks to the dedicated detectives, agents and prosecutors who never gave up on this case,” prosecutors said at the time. “The charges announced today begin to provide a measure of justice to the family and friends of the victim, and make clear that the rule of law will be upheld, whether that takes days, months, or decades.”
Jay Bryant, a third man allegedly involved in the killing who prosecutors charged with murder last May, will have a separate trial later this year.
Ahead of the trial, Jordan and Washington argued that prosecutors waited too long to charge them, meaning they wouldn’t be able to properly defend themselves. For instance, Jordan said cell phone records that would support his alibi were no longer available, and that key witnesses would have trouble remembering information.
But in September 2022, the federal judge overseeing the case rejected those arguments, calling them “speculative” and unsupported by evidence: “The court has no idea what Jordan believes the phone records contain, how they could conceivably contradict the Government’s evidence, and how those contradictions could conceivably demonstrate that Jordan did not commit the crime.”
A jury found Friday that celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D did not violate a photographer’s copyright when she used his portrait of Miles Davis as the basis for a tattoo she put on the arm of a friend.
The Los Angeles jury deliberated for just over two hours before deciding that the tattoo by the former star of the reality shows “Miami Ink” and “LA Ink” was not similar enough to photographer Jeffrey Sedlik’s 1989 portrait of the jazz legend that she needed to have paid permission.
“I’m obviously very happy for this to be over,” Von D, who inked her friend’s arm with Davis as a gift about seven years ago, said outside the courtroom. “It’s been two years of a nightmare worrying about this, not just for myself but for my fellow tattoo artists.”
The eight jurors made the same decision about a drawing Von D made from the portrait to base the tattoo on, and to several social media posts she made about the process, which were also part of Sedlik’s lawsuit. And they found that the tattoo, drawing and posts also all fell within the legal doctrine of fair use of a copyrighted work, giving Von D and other tattoo artists who supported her and followed the trial a resounding across-the-board victory.
“We’ve said all along that this case never should have been brought,” Von D’s attorney Allen B. Grodsky said after the verdict. “The jury recognized that this was just ridiculous.”
Sedlik’s attorney Robert Edward Allen said they plan to appeal. He said it the images, which both featured a close-up of Davis gazing toward the viewer and making a “shh” gesture, were so similar he didn’t know how the jury could reach the conclusion they did.
“If those two things are not substantially similar, then no one’s art is safe,” Allen said.
He told jurors during closing arguments earlier Friday that the case has “nothing to do with tattoos.”
“It’s about copying others’ protected works,” Allen said. “It’s not going to hurt the tattoo industry. The tattoo police are not going to come after anyone.”
Allen emphasized the meticulous work Sedlik did to set up the shoot, to create the lighting and mood, and to put Davis in the pose that would make for an iconic photo that was first published on the cover of JAZZIZ magazine in 1989. Sedlik registered the copyright in 1994.
And he said that subsequently, licensing the image to others including tattoo artists was a major part of how he made his living.
Von D said during the three-day trial that she never licenses the images she recreates, and she considers work like the Davis tattoo a form of “fan art.”
“I made zero money off it,” she testified. “I’m not mass-producing anything. I think there is a big difference.”
Her attorney Grodsky emphasized for jurors that that lack of an attempt to cash in on the image was essential to the tattoo being a form of fair use, an exception in copyright law used for works including commentary, criticism and parody.
Allen argued in his closing that the social media posts about the tattoo were a promotion of her and her studio, and thus a form of monetizing the image.
If jurors had sided with Sedlik, they could have awarded him as little as a few hundred dollars or as much as $150,000.
Von D was among the stars of the reality series “Miami Ink” then was the featured artist on its spinoff “LA Ink,” which ran on TLC from 2007 to 2011.
The 41-year-old Von D, whose legal name is Katherine von Drachenberg, was already a prominent young tattoo artist when she became a TV personality through her appearances on TLC’s “Miami Ink” starting in 2005 on TLC. She was the central star of its spinoff, “LA Ink,” which ran from 2007 to 2011 and made her possibly the most famous tattoo artist in the country.
Von D said that despite the victory, she’s not enthused about getting back to work.
“I think I don’t want to ever tattoo again, my heart has been crushed through this in different ways,” she said. “We’ll see with time.”