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At the end of February, TikTok took down every song in which Universal Music Publishing Group owns a share, a complicated step in the escalating showdown between the two companies that started a month earlier during the week before the Grammy Awards.
We are now in uncharted territory: Never before has a major label used the “nuclear option” to withdraw both recorded music and publishing rights from a platform — an especially dramatic step because it includes any song in which UMG owns even a small share. (By Billboard‘s estimates, it affects over 60% of the most popular TikTok songs in the U.S.) What most people don’t know is that these negotiations might perhaps also be affected by a Feb. 9 decision from the Munich Regional Court about the German implementation of the 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market — the Urheberrechts-Diensteanbieter-Gesetz (UrhDaG). It will certainly shape future negotiations like this.
The case involved the Berlin-based film distributor Nikita Ventures, which operates YouTube channels and, coincidentally, TikTok. And although it wasn’t covered much by English-language press, it shows that negotiating leverage is gradually shifting from platforms to rights holders. “This verdict,” Matthias Lausen, a founding partner of the Lausen law firm, who represented Nikita told me, “shows that there is no safe harbor in Europe anymore for platforms.”
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In the case, Nikita said that it offered to license its content to TikTok in early 2022, at a cost of three euros per thousand views, an amount based on a published rate from GEMA, the German collecting society. (Licensees often seem to pay less than this.) By summer, TikTok had not responded with a counteroffer, and Nikita said that the content it had asked TikTok to block was available until August. TikTok said in court that it was still negotiating, that its filtering system is compliant with the law and that it responded to takedown notices. The court essentially ruled that TikTok didn’t make a best effort to negotiate, though, and held the company liable for infringement, with damages to be determined, plus required it to provide information about how many times the content in question was accessed, as well as its resulting revenue and profit.
Why does this matter? Until now, the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and laws like it have limited the leverage of rights holders in negotiations. Platforms that make available content uploaded by users have been free to build audiences, and businesses, as long as they have no direct knowledge of infringement and respond promptly to takedown notices filed by copyright holders. This has given platforms what some might call a “Free Ride,” and on a Feb. 28 UMG earnings call chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said “there must not be free rides for massive global platforms such as TikTok.”
The 2019 European Copyright Directive was intended to address this, and it requires online platforms to make their “best efforts” to license content, as well as block content they haven’t licensed once rights holders have given them the necessary information. But this is the first court decision based on it.
Nothing will change overnight. The scope of this decision is limited, platforms could potentially get around it by better documenting their negotiations with rights holders, and it’s hard to imagine it will have a substantial effect on UMG’s negotiations with TikTok. But it shows that Europe is serious about forcing online platforms to negotiate on an even playing field, which should result in more favorable deals. (Since European countries do not have class-action lawsuits or high statutory damages for copyright infringement, though, this will not lead to a gold rush of litigation.)
Much of that is in the future, and some of these deals will involve platforms that don’t even exist yet. To get a sense of how this might play out, though, imagine a video-based nano-blogging platform that allows schoolchildren to record minute-long covers of pop songs. (I’m making this up, of course, but it’s not the dumbest idea I’ve heard this year.) That platform would have to approach rightsholders about deals early and often, then take serious steps to block the content they ask it to. That means it would have to license content before it got big — not once it’s already too big to fail.
Even now, TikTok needs to make a “best effort” to take down UMG’s publishing catalog. The company took prompt action, so it’s likely to be in the clear there, although it will be interesting to see what happens with recordings that are sped up and slowed down. At a time when songs are sliced and diced by influencers, how elaborate does a best effort have to be? Could we find out in a case that involves this dispute? The odds are against it, but stranger things have happened.
For the past quarter century, rights holders have had a hard time negotiating on an even playing field, which has arguably pushed down the price of content for both online businesses and, through them, for users. That dynamic is changing — slower than rights holders want and faster than platforms prefer — but steadily all the same. It will be hard to measure this, because these big licensing deals by their nature are complicated and intransparent. Finally, though – for good or ill depending on what side you’re
JKBX, a promising music investment platform that allows songwriters and recording artists to sell their royalties to investors, opened its doors for business on Wednesday (March 6), bringing music industry veterans and high-profile investors into the nascent world of fan-powered music financing.
Founded in 2023 by Sam Handel and John Chapman of venture capital and private equity firm Dundee Partners, JKBX had been waiting for approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Its numerous investors include such companies as Spotify, Live Nation, YouTube, Red Light Management and Bertelsmann Digital Music. Additional backing came from Galaxy Digital, Valor Equity Partners and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, sources previously told Billboard. According to a June filing with the SEC, JKBX had raised $16.1 million since January 2023.
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The company is headed by Scott Cohen, who built The Orchard into an independent distribution powerhouse and was Warner Music Group’s chief innovation officer from 2019 to 2022. Sam Thacker, a former independent singer-songwriter, is the chief operating officer. Whitney-Gayle Benta, previously the global head of artist & talent relations at Spotify, is the chief music officer. Scott Shipman, a veteran of such tech companies as eBay and Dapper Labs, is the chief legal officer.
JKBX sells royalty shares only to qualified purchasers as defined in Regulation A under the Securities Act. A qualified purchaser must satisfy one of four tests: has a net worth, or joint net worth with a spouse, exceeding $1 million (excluding the value of the primary residence, furniture and automobiles); has earned income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years, or exceeding $300,00 with a spouse’s income; has a professional certification or credentials for accredited investor status; or is a family client.
Regulation A allows JKBX to bring retail investors to an asset class that has rarely been open to anyone other than institutional investors. “Now that JKBX has secured qualification from the SEC for its offerings, the game changes substantially, and we can expect retail investors to get excited about the chance to own a piece of the music they personally connect with and gain exposure to this non-correlated alternative asset class,” Joe Gawronski, president and CEO of Rosenblatt Securities and a JKBX advisor, said in a statement.
JKBX currently lists 85 projects — 69 of which involve Ryan Tedder, the songwriter and producer best known as a member of the group OneRepublic. Tedder is a songwriter or producer on tracks by Adele, Jonas Brothers and Diplo that are offered on the platform.
At least initially, JKBX isn’t working directly with Tedder and other musicians. Instead, the company’s deals are with record labels, music publishers and catalog funds that own the copyrights behind the royalties offered on the platform. Tedder sold a majority stake in his publishing catalog to KKR in 2021 for a reported $200 million.
The current share prices produce approximately 3.5% return based on the information given on JKBX’s “offerings” web page: price per share, number of shares offered and annual royalties for either the last two or three full calendar years.
For example, JKBX is selling 200,000 shares of “Counting Stars,” written by Tedder and recorded by OneRepublic, for $31.37 apiece. The site gives royalties — songwriter royalties for mechanical, synch, public performance and other income sources — for two years: $261,497.39 in 2022 and $180,839.00 in 2021. With a share price of $31.37 and average annual royalties per share of $1.11, an investment in “Counting Stars” produces an expected annual return of 3.52%.
Share prices on JKBX are currently fixed, meaning a song’s return will fluctuate based on the amount of royalties paid out, not an increase or decrease in the price. JKBX intends to launch a secondary marketplace in 2024, according to the site’s FAQ section, that will allow investors to re-sell their shares.
A federal judge is allowing music publishers to move forward with a copyright lawsuit filed against X Corp. over allegations of widespread copyright infringement on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
In a split ruling Tuesday (Mar. 5), Judge Aleta A. Trauger tossed out major parts of the case, like the accusation that X itself directly infringed any music. But she allowed some of the lawsuit’s core allegations — that X essentially enabled illegal behavior by its users by refusing to crack down on them — to move ahead.
In one example, the judge ruled that the music companies could pursue their “particularly striking” allegation that Twitter had been less willing to crack down on users who had paid for “verified” status.
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“If X Corp. truly did allow some users to effectively purchase the right to be able to infringe with less severe consequences, then that was plausibly an instance of promoting X/Twitter’s use to infringe copyright,” the judge wrote.
The case against Twitter was filed in June by dozens of music publishers, who claim that users on the Elon Musk-owned site had infringed over 1,700 songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — a claim that, if proven, could put the social media giant on the hook for $255 million in damages.
The case was organized by the National Music Publishers’ Association, which has long argued that Twitter is the last major social media service that refuses to license music. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat have all allegedly entered into such deals with publishers, providing a library of licensed music for users to legally add to their posts. The lawsuit claimed that Twitter had, instead, effectively allowed its users to supply such music illegally.
The case was filed by Concord, Universal Music Publishing Group, peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and Wixen Music Publishing.
Twitter moved to dismiss the lawsuit in August, arguing that social media sites clearly do not directly infringe copyrights when users upload illegal material. And they argued that digital services also cannot be sued for so-called secondary infringement unless they take active steps to aid the illicit behavior: “In this case, plaintiffs do not allege that X encouraged, induced, or took affirmative steps with the intent to foster the infringement of plaintiffs’ works,” the company’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Trauger partly agreed with Twitter’s arguments. She easily dismissed the allegations of direct infringement, citing recent Supreme Court precedents, and also ruled that the company could not be held liable for “vicarious infringement” — meaning it profited directly from allowing illicit materials on the site. She also ruled that the music companies could not accuse X of so-called contributory infringement simply by offering tools that could sometimes be abused by infringers.
“Many of the supposedly problematic practices that the plaintiffs identify are unremarkable features of X/Twitter generally that X Corp. has simply failed to fence off completely from infringers,” the judge wrote. “The plaintiffs have not identified any basis for concluding that X Corp. was obligated to make its service worse for everyone, just to punish the people who misuse it.”
But Judge Trauger said other alleged conduct, if ultimately proven, could put Twitter on the hook for damages. One such claim, she said, is the allegation that X committed contributory infringement by failing to crack down on “severe serial infringers” who “openly and obviously used the service as a tool for repeatedly posting infringing content.”
“If … there was a class of X/Twitter users who were brazenly using the platform as an infringement tool, and X Corp. made the decision to unreasonably withhold enforcement of its own policies against those users … then X Corp. could plausibly be held contributorily liable,” the judge wrote.
Another claim Judge Trauger allowed to move forward was that X took too long to respond to takedown notices from copyright owners: “If X Corp. engaged in egregious delays in responding to valid takedown notices, or outright ignored some notices that were both facially and actually valid, that could support liability.”
Notably, Tuesday’s ruling did not address the thorny issue of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal law that provides sites like Twitter with immunity — a “safe harbor” — from litigation over material uploaded by their users, so long as they promptly remove it when asked. The music publishers say X clearly failed to do so; the site strongly denies that point.
Though X’s initial motion to dismiss the case did not invoke the DMCA, the company’s lawyers will undoubtedly do so at a later stage of the case now that some of the claims are moving forward. When they do so, the statute will provide X lawyers with another avenue for defeating the allegations that Judge Trauger refused to dismiss on Tuesday.
An attorney for X did not return a request for comment on Tuesday evening.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokeswoman for the NMPA said the group was “pleased” with the ruling: “The spread of rampant music piracy on the platform is obvious and unacceptable, and we look forward to securing just compensation for the songwriters and music publishers whose work is being stolen.”
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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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 […]