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Sony Music Group chairman Rob Stringer said on Tuesday (May 23) that the company is focused on the fight against low-quality content — which he called ”the lowest common denominator” — flooding top streaming platforms. “We have to look after the premium quality artists at the top of our business,” Stringer said during a company-wide […]
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: Lawyers for Fetty Wap battle with prosecutors ahead of his sentencing over federal drug charges; the Supreme Court issues a major copyright ruling on Andy Warhol’s images of Prince; Ed Sheeran wins another lawsuit over “Let’s Get It On”; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Fetty Wap Faces Drug Sentencing
With Fetty Wap facing sentencing this week for his conviction on federal drug charges, the rapper’s lawyers and prosecutors are battling over how much prison time he should receive — and in the process, they’ve dipped into one of music’s biggest legal controversies.
Attorneys for the rapper, who pleaded guilty in August to participating in “a multimillion-dollar bicoastal drug distribution organization,” asked a judge last week to sentence him to just five years — the minimum under the law. They say he only turned to crime to support family members as his touring income dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But prosecutors quickly fired back with a darker story: Of a successful musician who had already earned millions but chose to “supplement his income” by selling “drugs he knew would ruin lives.” And notably, they cited Fetty’s music itself, claiming he should receive a harsher punishment in part because he used his songs to “glamorize the drug trade.”
“Before his arrest, the defendant became famous singing about his experience cooking crack cocaine, selling drugs and making substantial money from those illegal endeavors,” prosecutors wrote. “Young people who admire the defendant and are considering selling drugs need to be sent a message.”
If you’ve been following music law for the past year, you’ll know that’s a controversial move.
After a high-profile gang indictment against Young Thug in Atlanta, the use of rap lyrics in criminal cases has come under increasing scrutiny. Critics say references to drugs and violence are stock elements of hip-hop and should not be treated literally — and that by doing so, prosecutors infringe on free speech and sway courts with unfair evidence, with predictably disproportionate harm inflicted on Black artists.
Lawmakers in California recently enacted a law that sharply restricts the practice, and legislators in New York seem poised to pass a similar bill later this year. A federal bill to limit when lyrics can be used in cases like the one against Fetty Wap was re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last month but faces a less clear path to passage than the state-level measures.
To get the full story, including the actual legal documents filed by both sides, go read our full articles on the sentencing recommendations from Fetty Wap and from prosecutors.
Other top stories…
SCOTUS RULES ON WARHOL & FAIR USE – Ruling on a case that record labels and publishers called “critical to the American music industry,” the U.S. Supreme Court said that Andy Warhol did not make “fair use” of a photographer’s copyrights when he used her images of Prince to create one of his distinctive screen prints. The ruling essentially maintained the status quo for music companies, who feared that a decision for Warhol could have disrupted industry practices for sampling, or possibly given legal cover for AI companies to use copyrighted songs.
JIMI HENDRIX DISPUTES HEADS TO UK – A transatlantic legal battle between Jimi Hendrix’s estate and his former bandmates — over control of the rights to music created by the trio’s Jimi Hendrix Experience — is going to be fought primarily in London for now, after a U.S. federal judge ruled that she would defer to the British courts.
ED SHEERAN WINS AGAIN – Less than two weeks after Ed Sheeran won a blockbuster jury trial over whether his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” a federal judge dismissed a second, closely-related copyright case accusing him of copying the same iconic song.
YOUTUBE WON’T FACE CLASS ACTION – A federal judge dealt a major blow to a lawsuit that claims YouTube enables piracy by restricting access to copyright tools like Content ID, refusing to allow the case to proceed as a class action that could have included tens of thousands of rightsholders.
FACIAL-RECOGNITION FIGHT CONTINUES – The owner of Madison Square Garden Entertainment filed a new legal action demanding access to the phone records of a New York state liquor investigator, opening a new front in a sprawling legal war over the use of facial recognition technology to ban lawyers from venues.
The owner of Madison Square Garden has filed a new legal action demanding access to the phone records of a New York state liquor investigator — the same state official who the company reportedly hired a private detective to tail.
In a petition filed Monday, attorneys for MSG Entertainment (MSGE) asked a New York judge to force Verizon to hand over cellphone records from Charles Stravalle, an investigator for the State Liquor Authority (SLA). The filing says the records will prove MSGE’s allegations that the SLA has unfairly targeted the company with a “sham” investigation over its controversial move to use facial-recognition technology to ban opposing lawyers from its venues.
“The SLA is misusing its enforcement powers at the behest of politically influential lawyers,” MSGE’s attorneys wrote. “Angered and motivated, those lawyers prevailed on the SLA to conduct an inherently compromised investigation of MSG.”
According to MSGE’s filing, already-revealed texts between those same lawyers and Stravalle “show that the investigation was compromised from the start” — and MSGE now wants access to the rest of them.
“MSG needs the phone records it subpoenaed from respondent Verizon to be able to more fully understand how deep this collusion and corruption goes, and how high the deck was stacked against MSG from the start,” the company wrote.
In a statement to Billboard, MSGE’s attorney Jim Walden said: “We believe the incriminating evidence revealed by the communications between the SLA and the plaintiff’s attorneys is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what our motion and subsequent subpoenas will uncover. We look forward to exposing the SLA’s abuses and bringing the facts to light.”
A rep for the SLA did not return a request for comment from the agency and Stravalle. A rep for Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including whether or not it would comply with the subpoena.
The new filing comes two months after the New York Times reported that MSGE and Dolan had hired a private detective to track Stravalle after he was assigned to work on the SLA’s probe into the company.
It also comes amid an increasingly sprawling legal battle facing MSGE and Dolan, who also own Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and other live music venues throughout New York City.
The fight began last year when MSGE enacted new rules to ban attorneys who are suing the company from attending events at Madison Square Garden and other MSGE venues. When MSGE began enforcing those rules using facial recognition technology, it drew public scrutiny and backlash from lawmakers like State Senator Liz Kruger, who expressed concern that MSGE’s rules were “discriminatory and retaliatory.”
In November, the SLA began investigating whether the lawyer ban violates state alcohol laws, which require businesses to be “open to the public” — a probe that could result in the revocation of MSGE’s liquor licenses. In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James requested information about the ban, warning that it might violate local, state and federal human rights laws. And in March, state lawmakers threatened to revoke Madison Square Garden’s property tax exemption which is valued at roughly $43 million a year.
Through it all, MSGE and Dolan have remained defiant. In a January television interview in which he threatened to stop serving alcohol at Madison Square Garden, Dolan defended his company’s actions: “If you’re suing us, we’re just asking you please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us, and yes we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”
Monday’s new petition is Dolan’s latest legal effort to fight back against the SLA investigation. He previously sued to challenge the validity of the investigation itself, but the case was tossed out in April after a judge ruled that MSGE could not bring such a case until the SLA had actually issued a decision. MSGE is currently appealing that ruling to a state appeals court.
Read the entire petition from MSGE here:
Warner Music Group executive Ernst Trapp is stepping down from his dual role of president of global e-commerce, retail and licensing at the label group, and as CEO of specialty online retailer EMP at the end of the month. “Now is the right time for me to move on and pursue new opportunities,” Trapp said. […]
Earlier this year, Oleg Stavitsky, co-founder/CEO of Endel, laid out a vision for how his company’s AI-driven functional soundscapes could help the major labels — even as anxiety around AI was reaching new heights. “We can process the stems [the audio building blocks of a track] from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and come back with a functional sleep version of that album,” Stavitsky told Billboard. At the time, he said his company was in talks with all the major labels about this possibility.
A few short months later, Stavitsky will have a chance to do exactly that: Endel announced a new partnership with Universal Music Group on Tuesday (May 23). In a statement, Endel’s CEO said his company will put “AI to work and help UMG build new and exciting offerings to promote wellness and banish the perceived threat around AI.”
“Our goal was always to help people focus, relax, and sleep with the power of sound,” Stavitsky added. “AI is the perfect tool for this. Today, seeing our technology being applied to turn your favorite music into functional soundscapes is a dream come true.” Artists from Republic and Interscope will be the first to participate — though the announcement omitted any names — with their soundscapes arriving “within the next few months.”
Endel focuses on creating “sound that is not designed for conscious listening,” Stavitsky told Billboard earlier this year. “Music is something you consciously listen to when you actually want to listen to a song or an album or a melody,” he explained. “What we produce is something that blends with the background and is scientifically engineered to put you in a certain cognitive state.”
Endel’s technology can spit out these soundscapes effectively at the click of a button. “The model is trained using the stems that are either produced in-house by our team, led by co-founder and chief composer Dmitry Evgrafov (who’s himself an established neo-classical artist), or licensed from artists that we’ve worked with,” Stavitsky said. “The trick is all of the stems” — Endel has used stems from James Blake, Miguel and Grimes —”are created following the scientific framework created by our product team in consultation with neuroscientists.”
Some people in the music industry have taken to calling sounds designed for sleep, study, or soothing frayed nerves “functional music.” And while it maintains a low profile, it’s an increasingly popular and lucrative space. “Science tells us that nature sounds and water sounds have a calming effect on your cognitive state,” Stavitsky noted this winter. “So naturally, people are turning to this type of content more and more.”
Early in 2022, Endel estimated that the size of the functional music market is 10 billions streams a month across all platforms. (The company has since raised its estimate to 15 billion streams a month.) If true, that would mean functional music is several times more popular than the biggest superstars. “Every day, hundreds of millions of people are self-medicating with sound,” Stavitsky wrote in March. “If you look at the top 10 most popular playlists at any major streaming service, you’ll see at least 3-4 ‘functional’ playlists: meditation, studying, reading, relaxation, focus, sleep, and so on.”
But this has caused the music industry some concern. Major labels have not historically focused on making this kind of music. Most streaming services pay rights holders according to their share of total plays; when listeners turn to functional music to read a book or wind down after a long day, that means they’re not playing major label artists, and the companies make less money. In a memo to staff in January, UMG CEO Lucian Grainge complained that “consumers are increasingly being guided by algorithms to lower-quality functional content that in some cases can barely pass for ‘music.’”
But record companies can’t eliminate listener demand for functional music. It makes sense, then, that they would try to take over a chunk of the market. And Stavitsky has been savvy, actively pushing Endel’s technology as a way for the labels to “win back market share.”
Back in 2019, Endel entered into a distribution agreement for 20 albums with Warner Music Group. And the company announced its new partnership with UMG this week. In a statement, Michael Nash, UMG’s evp and chief digital officer, praised Endel’s “impressive ingenuity and scientific innovation.”
“We are excited to work together,” Nash continued, “and utilize their patented AI technology to create new music soundscapes — anchored in our artist-centric philosophy — that are designed to enhance audience wellness, powered by AI that respects artists’ rights in its development.”
Riser House Records has signed LANCO, welcoming the group to its artist roster. Known for the two-week No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit “Greatest Love Story,” from the group’s 2018 debut album Hallelujah Nights, LANCO also earned an Academy of Country Music Award for new duo or group of the year, in addition to nominations […]
Lizzy McAlpine, whose TikTok-driven hit “Ceilings” topped Billboard‘s Alternative Streaming Songs chart in March while also marking her first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, has signed with artist development company Godmode for management, Billboard can reveal.
McAlpine, who recently completed her North American tour, signed with RCA Records in April and is represented by Ben Buchanan, Marlene Tsuchii and Brian Greenbaum at CAA for booking.
Led by co-founder/CEO Talya Elitzer, Godmode’s roster also includes Channel Tres, SG Lewis and JPEGMAFIA. The company additionally encompasses a record label and publishing arm.
Poolside, the artist project of producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Paradise, signed with Ninja Tune imprint Counter Records after self-releasing his three previous albums via his Pacific Standard Records imprint. Poolside’s first release under the label, the single “Each Night” featuring Australian indie-pop band Mazy, dropped Wednesday (May 17). He’s represented by managers Bryan Duquette and Michael Bigham at Another Planet Management and booking agents Avery McTaggart at TBA and Latane Hughes at Wasserman.
Australian electronic rock band Pendulum signed with Mushroom Group and Universal Music Group’s global independent music division Virgin Music Group, which will release the group’s new single, “Halo” featuring Matt Tuck of Bullet For My Valentine, on June 2.
Country singer/songwriter Matt Schuster (“Vienna”) signed with WME for booking and Extended Play for management; he previously signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.
Rock band Krooked Kings and its label home, Nobody Gets It, signed a deal with Matt Geffen‘s Coup D’Etat Music for distribution (in partnership with ADA Worldwide) and publishing (in partnership with AVEX USA). This is the first signing for Coup D’Etat’s newly-launched distribution division. The band, which just released the album All Out of Good Days, is represented by manager Wade Davis of Nobody Gets It and Alex Douma of CAA for booking.
Country singer/songwriter Tyler Halverson signed to The Erv Woolsey Company for management. Halverson recently released his major label debut single, “Her,” on Atlantic Records.
Lebanese singer Maya Diab (“Sawa,” “Habibi”) signed to Warner Music Middle East, which will release her EP, #MyMayaV, later this year. In addition to her music career, Diab is known across the Arab world as a music producer, TV personality and fashion influencer.
Los Angeles-based indie-electronic duo The Hellp (comprised of vocalist Noah Dillon and producer Chandler Ransom Lucy) signed with Atlantic Records, which released its new single, “California Dream Girl,” on March 16.
Ambient artist/mastering engineer Taylor Deupree signed to Nettwerk, which released his latest song, “Eev,” on May 12. Deupree previously released music via his own label, 12k.
Country, bluegrass and gospel duo Dailey & Vincent signed to Morris Higham Management. Made up of Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent, the duo is signed to BMG Nashville and represented by booking agents Tony Conway, Brandon Mauldin and Cody Payne at Conway Entertainment Group.
Grammy-nominated production and songwriting team Futuristiks: Mike & Keys signed a two-album partnership with Lowly/Create Music Group, kicked off by the release of their new EP, 10 Toes Down featuring Casey Veggies. The duo served as executive producers on Nipsey Hussle‘s Crenshaw mixtape and have also worked with Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Lupe Fiasco, 50 Cent and more.
Los Angeles-based, Toledo, Ohio-bred rapper CNN Mikey signed to Polo G‘s label ODA (Only Dreams Achieve), which will drop the video for his ODA debut single, “FOR MY PEOPLE,” on Wednesday (May 24). CNN Mikey is managed by Mike Maloian and Patrick MacDonald of 25/7 Management.
Sony Classical signed Frankfurt, Germany-based cellist Anastasia Kobekina and will release her debut major label album early next year. Kobekina is managed by Gregor Kotow and Shannen Liu at Liu Kotow International Management & Promotion.
Lauren Records signed Talking Kind, the solo project of Big Nothing member and former Spraynard frontman Pat Graham. The label released his first song, “Damn Shame,” on Thursday (May 18).
One of the most prominent developers of do-it-yourself music creation platforms, BandLab Technologies, raised $25 million in Series B1 financing at a valuation of $425 million, the company announced Tuesday (May 23).
The round was led by existing investor Cercano Management – formerly Vulcan Capital, the venture capital arm of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Holding company – with participation from Prosus Ventures, a giant technology investor with a portfolio that includes e-commerce, delivery, fintech and education platforms.
The new funding will allow BandLab to augment its work force, offer more emerging creator campaigns, boost its support services – such as BandLab for Education – the company stated in a press release. Last year, the company raised $65 million in a Series B round that valued BandLab at $315 million – $110 million less than the latest valuation – and was led by Vulcan Capital with participation from Caldecott Music Group and K3 Ventures.
BandLabs Technologies is best known for its namesake platform, BandLab, a mobile-first digital audio workstation with over 60 million registered users. The company also owns the long-running digital audio workstation Cakewalk, which it acquired in 2018; ReverbNation, a 16-year-old independent artist services provider acquired in 2021; and Airbit, a beats marketplace acquired in February.
It competes in a growing category of cloud-based music creation tools that offer a far more simplified user experience than common studio platforms like ProTools. Like BandLab, Soundtrap, acquired by Spotify in 2017, makes creating songs an easy and collaborative process. RapChat boasts more than 10 million music creators on its feature-rich mobile app.
“BandLab serves a vital role in today’s music creation ecosystem, enabling more artists to break through at previously unfathomable levels,” Meng Ru Kuok, BandLab CEO and co-founder, said in a statement to Billboard.” This additional investment amplifies our position in today’s environment to accelerate our vision and deepen meaningful collaborations, bridging the gap between emerging talent and established industry players. We’re ready to double down on our mission, empowering artists at scale.”
Over the last two decades, independent musicians have been given digital tools that markedly lowered the barriers to entry. Digital audio workstations like Apple’s GarageBand gave anybody with an Apple computer the ability to easily record and edit audio files. Digital distribution services such as TuneCore allowed anybody to sell their music online. Now, tools to create music have been simplified to mobile phone apps and artificial intelligence-powered products – such as BandLab’s SongStarter – give the average internet user the ability to make music.
Sometimes, BandLab users have found legitimate chart success using the app’s entry-level toolkit. Last year, “Romantic Homocide,” created on BandLab by 17-year-old Houston artist d4vd, reached No. 45 on Billboard’s Hot 100 after another of his songs “Here With Me” got him signed to Darkroom/Interscrope Records. Also last year, BandLab teamed with Billboard to launch the Bringing BandLab to Billboard portal to help expose its creators to a global audience. Two artists were featured at Billboard.com as a result: The Moon City Masters and Hitha.
A federal judge on Monday (May 22) dealt a major blow to a lawsuit that claims YouTube enables piracy by restricting access to copyright tools like Content ID, refusing to allow the case to proceed as a class action that could have included tens of thousands of rightsholders.
The lawsuit, filed by a composer named Maria Schneider, claims that YouTube has become a “hotbed of piracy” because the platform provides “powerful copyright owners” like record labels with Content ID to block and monetize unauthorized uses of their content, but fails to do the same for “ordinary owners.”
But in his ruling on Monday, Judge James Donato said that Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies, dramatically reducing the scope of the lawsuit.
Cases can only be “certified” as class actions if the various accusers share similar complaints against the defendant. And in Schneider’s case, Judge Donato said different rightsholders would have very different cases against YouTube.
“It has been said that copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment, and for good reason,” the judge wrote. “Every copyright claim turns upon facts which are particular to that single claim of infringement [and] every copyright claim is also subject to defenses that require their own individualized inquiries.”
Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.
For its part, YouTube says it’s done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”
With a trial date looming next month, attorneys for Schneider had urged Judge Donato to let the case move forward as a class action. An expert retained by her legal team suggested that the class “at a minimum” would include between 10,000 and 20,000 aggrieved copyright owners.
“The Copyright Act does not countenance such blatant disregard of individual artists’ intellectual property rights,” her attorneys wrote. “Class actions were created for this institutionalized misbehavior that relies upon the disincentives and lack of resources for a lawsuit absent collective action. A class action is the superior method through which YouTube’s participation in and facilitation of copyright infringement can be held to account.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Donato strongly disagreed. He said the many individual claims against YouTube would require “highly individualized inquiries into the merits,” including a case-by-case assessment of whether YouTube possibly had a valid license to those particular songs.
“Whether YouTube has a license for a particular work will be a matter of intense inquiry at trial,” the judge wrote. “The answer to this inquiry will depend upon facts and circumstances unique to each work and copyright claimant.”
Monday’s order won’t end the case, but it will now proceed to trial based only on copyrights owned by Schneider and two other plaintiffs (Uniglobe Entertainment and AST Publishing). The lawsuit is scheduled for a June 12 trial, though it’s unclear if that date will be changed in the wake of Monday’s decision.
An attorney for Schneider and a representative for YouTube did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday’s order.
Social media company TikTok Inc. filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to overturn Montana’s first-in-the-nation ban on the video sharing app, arguing the law is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and is based on “unfounded speculation” that the Chinese government could access users’ data. The lawsuit by TikTok itself follows one filed last week by five content […]