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Megan Thee Stallion is demanding a restraining order against Tory Lanez, claiming he has continued to “terrorize her” with a “campaign of harassment” even as he sits behind bars on a ten-year prison sentence for shooting her.
In a petition filed Tuesday (Dec. 17) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for the superstar (real name Megan Pete) claim that Lanez (Daystar Peterson) has conspired with people outside prison to “harass, bully, and antagonize” her with misinformation amid his “desperate” appeal of his 2022 felony convictions.
“Mr. Peterson’s attempts to retraumatize and revictimize Ms. Pete recognize no limits — indeed, they continue even while he is behind bars,” Megan’s lawyers write. “While Mr. Peterson distorts and recklessly disregards the truth in his desperate attempt to appeal his conviction, his false assertions have reignited a slew of negative, harmful, and defamatory comments directed to Ms. Pete.”
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Monday’s petition cited a separate lawsuit Megan filed in October against YouTuber and social media personality Milagro Gramz, who she claims has served as a “mouthpiece and puppet” for the convicted singer. In an updated version of that case filed last week, Megan alleged that discovery in the case had revealed prison phone calls in which Lanez coordinated payments to Gramz.
“Mr. Peterson’s father—when he thought no one was listening—asked his son about payments to Ms. Cooper for her harassment of Ms. Pete,” Megan’s attorneys write in the new filing. “Instead of denying that Ms. Cooper has been paid, they question how Ms. Pete uncovered their conspiracy.”
If granted by a California judge, the restraining order would immediately bar Lanez from any harassing conduct. In the filing, Megan’s lawyers ask the judge that Lanez be “ordered not to contact Ms. Pete, directly or indirectly, or harass or intimidate her, directly or indirectly, online.”
The exact contours of such an order — what constitutes harassment of Megan versus Lanez simply speaking about his own defense — could be further clarified by the judge. Lanez would later have a chance to respond, and the judge would then decide whether to issue a longer-term restraining order.
Attorneys for Lanez did not immediately return a request for comment.
Lanez was convicted in December 2022 on three felony counts over the violent 2020 incident, in which he shot at the feet of Megan during an argument following a pool party at Kylie Jenner’s house in the Hollywood Hills. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has filed an appeal, which remains pending.
In the new petition, Megan’s attorneys also directly accused Lanez of orchestrating a high-profile false story that circulated on social media earlier this year, claiming incorrectly that an appeals court had declared him “innocent” in the shooting.
“Mr. Peterson, through third parties, disseminated a rumor which falsely suggested that an appellate court declared his innocence,” Megan’s lawyers write. “Mr. Peterson’s interpretation underscores his desire to spread misinformation in an effort to save his public image.”
Independent record labels and publishers are urging regulators to block the acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings by Universal Music Group (UMG) over fears that the deal weakens competition, to the “severe detriment” of artists and fans.
UMG-owned Virgin Music Group announced on Monday (Dec. 16) that it had agreed to buy Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million cash. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, bolsters UMG’s share of the music market by bringing a number of independent distributors, publishing and rights administration businesses owned by Downtown under its control. Those businesses include distributors CD Baby and FUGA, publishing administrator Songtrust and Los Angeles-based rights management company AdRev.
UMG’s purchase of Downtown comes two months after it acquired full ownership of European indie label group [PIAS] — a deal that also prompted indie trade groups to issue calls for regulators to intervene.
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“This is another land grab,” said Helen Smith, executive chair of independent labels trade body IMPALA — which represents more than 6,000 indie labels and music companies in Europe, including Beggars Group, Cooking Vinyl, Domino and Epitaph — in a statement about the Virgin-Downtown deal.
“We expect competition authorities in key jurisdictions to carry out thorough investigations and block these deals,” Smith added. She also pressed the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission, “to set the standard internationally.”
“The cynical use of the Virgin brand, once synonymous with independent entrepreneurship, should not hide the fact that this is about utter dominance and control,” added Beggars Group founder Martin Mills in a statement. “This is another step on the road of UMG’s pretence to be the independents’ fairy godmother,” he continued. “But there’s a wolf under that cape.”
The acquisition of [PIAS] and Downtown in rapid succession by UMG follows a flurry of dealmaking over the past several years that has seen both traditional music companies and outside investors snap up firms, labels and distributors that cater to the fast-growing global independent sector.
Major label acquisitions in that time include Sony Music’s 2022 purchase of artist services company AWAL and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights from Kobalt Music Group. More recently, Sony acquired Spanish label and distributor Altafonte, followed last month by a deal for Greece indie label Cobalt Music.
Meanwhile, Warner Music Group has been steadily growing its recorded music interests in Central and Eastern Europe, buying minority stakes in Croatia’s Dancing Bear Music, Slovenian independent label NIKA and Serbia’s Mascom; and acquiring Dutch label Cloud 9 Recordings.
UMG’s deals for [PIAS] and Downtown followed a decade-long ban on the music giant acquiring certain music companies or catalogs in Europe that expired in September 2022. Those restrictions, imposed by the European Commission in 2012 following the company’s $1.9 billion takeover of EMI, prevented UMG from re-acquiring any of the assets it had sold or re-sign any artists who had signed with labels from which it had divested, such as Parlophone Label Group or Chrysalis, for 10 years.
Although Downtown Music Holdings was founded and is headquartered in New York, the scale of its multifaceted business, representing over 50 million songs across more than 145 countries and spanning publishing, distribution, artist and label services, and royalty administration, makes it a major player in the global indie sector. As such, the company’s acquisition by UMG would create a “fundamental shift in the competitive dynamics of the music market,” warned IMPALA chair Dario Draštata in a statement on the acquisition.
The Brussels-based trade association said the sale of Downtown and [PIAS] would further squeeze the independents in an already highly concentrated market and help UMG move further into the market for distribution and services for labels and artists.
“This means more market share and gives UMG control over the opposition,” said IMPALA in a press release. It added, “UMG suing Believe is another part of the strategy,” referencing last month’s $500 million lawsuit filed by UMG, ABKCO and Concord Music Group against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore that accused them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings.
Other executives and organizations voicing concern over UMG’s latest acquisition include global independent music publishers trade body IMPF, which said the potential sale would “ultimately reduce choice for songwriters and publishers alike,” and the U.K. Association of Independent Music (AIM), whose CEO, Gee Davy, said the deal reduces independent routes to market.
“It is vital to uphold a true choice of partners for artists and labels and ensure that negotiating power does not become unbalanced,” said Davy in a statement.
Representatives for UMG did not respond to requests for comment when contacted by Billboard.
New York’s famed Blue Note Jazz Club is coming to the Sunset Strip.
On Tuesday (Dec. 17), officials with Blue Note Entertainment Group announced plans to open a Hollywood location modeled after the company’s New York flagship, which is known for its intimate atmosphere, performance roster of icons and rising stars, and propensity for regularly staging world-class jazz shows.
The new L.A. club, which is set to open its doors in March 2025, will mark Blue Note’s ninth location outside of New York with venues in Hawaii; Napa, Calif.; Tokyo; Rio de Janeiro; Sao Paulo; Milan; Beijing; and Shanghai.
“We are excited to bring the Blue Note experience to Los Angeles, offering the same intimate atmosphere and world-class performances that have defined our New York club,” says Tsion Bensusan, COO of Blue Note Entertainment Group, in a statement.
As part of the expansion, Blue Note officials announced that they have inked a partnership with the LA Philharmonic to rebrand the long-running Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival as the Blue Note Jazz Festival. Presented by the LA Phil, the 2025 edition of the festival kicks off on June 14 with a full lineup scheduled to be announced in February.
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“This collaboration represents a union of two iconic institutions dedicated to celebrating jazz and its profound impact on music and culture,” said Steven Bensusan, president of Blue Note Entertainment Group. LA Phil president/CEO Kim Noltemy added, “This partnership represents a shared dedication to celebrating jazz and its extraordinary artists while continuing the legacy of world-class music at the Bowl.”
The Blue Note in both New York and Los Angeles will be curated by artist, composer, producer and frequent collaborator Robert Glasper. In 2018, Glasper and Blue Note launched Glasper’s annual residency ROBTOBER. That partnership has since expanded to include events like the Blue Note Jazz Festival Napa, Blue Note at Sea and The Black Radio Experience, also in Napa.
“I’m honored to partner up with Blue Note once again for what will be a significant cultural intersection for the Los Angeles community,” said Glasper in a statement. “Los Angeles has always been a second home to me and I can’t wait to bring LA culture to the Blue Note.”
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: Daddy Yankee accuses his soon-to-be ex-wife of stealing $80 million from his company; Jay-Z’s attorneys demand dismissal after his accuser admits “mistakes”; Johnny Ramone’s widow wins a legal ruling in the battle over the punk band’s legacy; and more, including a special recap of the best-ever Christmas music lawsuits.
THE BIG STORY: Daddy Yankee’s Divorce Goes Nuclear
Just weeks after Daddy Yankee and wife Mireddys González announced they were divorcing following 20 years of marriage, his lawyers took things to another level.
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In a motion filed in Puerto Rico court, the reggaetón hitmaker accused González and others of withdrawing a stunning $80 million from the bank account of his El Cartel Records “without authorization.” He’s seeking an injunction forcing her “immediate removal” from the company and the disclosure of information to unravel whatever harm was allegedly done.
In addition to the accusations of stolen money, the lawsuit makes other notable claims — like alleging that González shut him out of the negotiations that led to October’s $217 million sale of part of his catalog to Concord. He claims he doesn’t actually know exactly what was sold, and that the price “turned out to be unreasonable, disproportionate and far below the real value.”
For more details, go read the full story from Billboard‘s Griselda Flores. And stay tuned at Billboard for more developments as the case moves forward.
CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: Holiday Music Lawsuits
With the holidays right around the corner, I broke down the many times that Christmas music has ended up in court — from Mariah Carey’s ongoing copyright battle over “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to Darlene Love’s fights with advertisers to repeated courtroom clashes over religious freedom. Before you kick off til the new year, go read the full story here.
Other top stories this week…
“I HAVE MADE SOME MISTAKES” – Jay-Z demanded the dismissal of a rape lawsuit linking him to the allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs, just hours after his accuser gave a bombshell interview to NBC News admitting inconsistencies and “mistakes” in her story. Jay-Z’s attorneys said they would seek to strike the complaint and seek penalties against Tony Buzbee, the attorney who filed it: “It is stunning that a lawyer would not only file such a serious complaint without proper vetting, but would make things worse by further peddling this false story in the press,” said Jay-Z attorney Alex Spiro. “We are asking the Court to dismiss this frivolous case today, and will take up the matter of additional discipline for Mr. Buzbee and all the lawyers that filed the complaint.”
ELSEWHERE IN DIDDY WORLD – On Friday, Combs said he would drop an appeal seeking to be released on bail, meaning he will remain in jail until his May trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges — a move that came after the bond request was rejected by federal judges three separate times. Then on Monday, the judge overseeing the criminal case rejected accusations from Diddy’s legal team that federal prosecutors leaked the infamous video of the Combs assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie, ruling there was no proof to such a charge.
HEY HO, LET’S SUE – Johnny Ramone’s widow, Linda Cummings-Ramone, won a legal victory over Joey Ramone‘s brother, Mickey Leigh, in their never-ending feud over control of the pioneering punk band’s legacy. An arbitrator ruled that Leigh’s manager, David Frey, must be terminated as a director on the band’s board for a wide variety of improper conduct, including improperly greenlighting a film project at Netflix with actor Pete Davidson attached to star as Joey. The ruling also detailed how Frey had tanked an opportunity for Linda to throw out the first pitch at a Ramones-themed New York Mets game: “There was no reason to lose this opportunity other than to continue the animosity and dysfunction,” the arbitrator wrote.
QUANDO RONDO SENTENCED – The rapper (Tyquian Terrel Bowman) was sentenced to nearly three years in federal prison after striking a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a federal drug offense in Georgia. The deal saw the Savannah-based rapper admit to a single count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana in return for prosecutors dropping more serious charges involving methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine.
ASSAULT CASE SETTLED – Paula Abdul and former American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe agreed to settle a lawsuit in which she alleged that he sexually assaulted her in the early 2000s when she was a judge on the show. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and Abdul simply said she was “grateful that this chapter has successfully come to a close and is now something I can now put behind me.”
TIKTOK AT SCOTUS – TikTok asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to block the federal law that would ban the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it. The appeal to the high court came just days after a federal appeals court affirmed the law’s constitutionality, rejecting TikTok’s claims that it violates the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. With the petition filed, the justices are on the clock: The statute banning TikTok — a crucial music industry promotion tool and a platform that now boasts more than 170 million users in the U.S. — goes into effect on Jan. 19.
“It’s still pretty awesome and ridiculous that we get paid to do this,” The Bowery Presents founder John “JoMo” Moore says. He and his partner, Jim Glancy, are discussing the 20th anniversary of their concert promotion and venue operation business, which they celebrated by producing four residencies for indie acts they’ve worked with since the beginning of their careers: Modest Mouse, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and a reunion of TV on the Radio, which was also celebrating a 20th anniversary — the release of its first album.
Although a subsidiary of AEG Presents since 2016, The Bowery Presents remains a brand that, more than any other concert promoter, is closely associated with top-shelf indie artists who began playing in clubs and evolved to arenas. In addition to the aforementioned acts, they include Vampire Weekend, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, Arcade Fire, Phoebe Bridgers and Brandi Carlile. It has also worked with mainstream acts like Adele and Sam Smith.
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Over the past two decades, the company has evolved as well. Glancy, who joined Moore from Live Nation in 2006, and AEG’s resources and venues have enabled The Bowery Presents to produce more shows at more — and larger — venues, including Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, where the company is the managing partner.
“We’ve been lucky in that things have continued to evolve,” Glancy says. “I’d go crazy doing the same thing day after day — like being on Broadway and doing A Chorus Line night No. 12,000. We always have interesting stories. We always have incredible opportunities.”
“This painting by the artist Dave McDowell was made for me,” Moore says. “It depicts some of my favorite things in life.”
Nina Westervelt
The company owns, co-owns and/or operates 18 venues in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia and Maine and has booking agreements with another 10. And while not all of them report to Billboard Boxscore, those that do in New York — including Brooklyn Steel, Terminal 5, Webster Hall, Music Hall of Williamsburg and Racket — grossed $17.6 million in the first 10 months of 2024. Forest Hills Stadium alone grossed $20.3 million during its season, although not all shows were promoted by The Bowery Presents or AEG.
You produced four residencies in the past month. Are they the future of booking smaller venues?
JOHN MOORE Residencies may not be the future of booking clubs, but the industry sees merit in confirming multiple shows in a major city and [music] center like New York. And we love to be part of that story when it makes sense for the artist.
What are the most enduring memories of the business and the shows you’ve produced?
MOORE The first 12 years being down on Ludlow Street, where we had a walkup office that was above Pianos [nightclub] from 2004 to June 2017, was a great time to be down there and to be starting the company with Mercury [Lounge] and Bowery Ballroom. We’d walk downstairs to Pianos to see Bon Iver play for the first time — not an underplay, just “Hey, this is the hot new guy.” Doing it on our own for 12 years before partnering with AEG was exciting.
JIM GLANCY For me, it’s the incredible music and the incredible artists that we’ve been able to work with over the last 20 years. Combined, we did 22 shows with LCD, Interpol, Modest Mouse and TV on the Radio over a three-week period. And we’ve probably done a total of 125 or 150 shows with them over the last 20 years. We took dozens and dozens of acts from Mercury Lounge or, later, Rough Trade, all the way up to [Madison Square] Garden. Vampire Weekend and The White Stripes and The Strokes. That’s the way you want the system to work. And we’re still doing that today. I can’t tell you if MJ Lenderman is going to play Madison Square Garden someday, but I can tell you he just did three Music Hall [of Williamsburg] shows in early October, and he’s got three sold-out Brooklyn Steels in April. That’s exciting.
“This is a tabletop painted by a Lower East Side artist Adam Lucas who went by Hanksy,” Moore says. “It’s called ‘Meth Rogen,’ and it’s a mashup of Seth Rogen and Walter White from Breaking Bad.”
Nina Westervelt
Do you have an established path through your venues in which you help artists evolve to play larger spaces?
GLANCY That’s a question for the industry. When we go back 15, 18, 20 years, there was the thing of, “Don’t skip steps. You’ve got to do the 200-capacity step and the 500-capacity step,” and there’s something to that with a career artist. I used to say to JoMo, “How was so-and-so last night?” and he’d say, “They’ll be great after they do another 300 shows.” He meant it. But there’s also the reality in this age, particularly in 2024, where things go viral and happen fast.
Do you ever tell an agent or manager, “No, that’s too big a venue for this act”?
MOORE It’s all about relationships with the agents and managers. In general, they seem to have a clear path of what they want and depending on what our relationship is, they’re calling and saying, “Hey, we were thinking of X, Y and Z.” And we’ll say, “I know that you’re thinking about Terminal 5, but the timing is right to consider Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel.” We ultimately need to trust them if they want to go bigger than we think, or we choose not to do it. We definitely are involved in the process but we’re not telling them what to do — and we’d like to sometimes.
Rising indie acts have a tougher time making a profit or even breaking even on tours. And yet, tickets to those shows are usually affordable. How does that work?
GLANCY Here’s the dirty secret: The act is not making any money, and neither are we. We’re both betting on our respective futures. If we look at our average ticket price at Music Hall of Williamsburg and go back over the last 10 years, it probably went from a $15 to an $18 or $19 ticket. You’ve got smaller rooms because it’s a sense of discovery. What you’re banking on is, it’s a student, it’s someone who’s living probably paycheck to paycheck. We want to make sure there’s not a barrier to entry for them. I think most agents, managers, artists are on the same wavelength.
“I have a strong attachment to New Orleans,” Glancy says. “This is a bottle of New Orleans R&B singer Ernie K-Doe’s hot sauce that the Allman Brothers’ manager Bert Holman gave me.”
Nina Westervelt
Do you work on ticket prices with managers and agents?
MOORE Yes, they often have an idea, like, “How about a $35 ticket?” Or sometimes they’ll say, “We need to make $10,000,” so then it’s backward math. To get $10,000 you need this ticket price. And then the question is, is that actually the right price?
GLANCY Every deal should start with “What’s the ticket price?” But as these bands get a little bigger, it’s “We need this price.” Then you’re working backward, and you’re going to start making bad decisions and bad habits. Setting a ticket price based on a requested guarantee will sometimes yield higher ticket prices than the fan base will support.
What are the advantages of being owned by AEG?
GLANCY When you’re independent, there are some things you do really well and there are some things you don’t do well. At the most basic level, with AEG, we’re getting a critical mass of information. When you’re in a silo by yourself, you’re only as good as your own borders. So the fact that our general managers can get on a weekly call with other GMs in the Northeast — we’re Virginia up to Maine — the Rocky Mountains, [AEG’s] Goldenvoice and, in the Southeast, our Zero Mile Presents counterparts, that’s invaluable. The same thing goes for our more than 100 sales and sponsorship people. And at Bowery, we were bad at the things that were least sexy to us: finance, accounting, IT, legal, HR. All those are important for running a company, especially a growing company. AEG has been incredible in that regard.
I wear this badge to high-profile gigs and special occasions,” Glancy explains. “It says, ‘Bowery Presents Bank Enforcement,’ with my name on it. It was inspired by a Bowery Bank commercial that Glancy stumbled upon on YouTube that features Joe DiMaggio saying, ‘Come to the Bowery. They’ll give you a lot of money.’ We send that out to agents.”
Nina Westervelt
Where do you see your company in five years?
GLANCY There are some interesting outdoor opportunities: in Maine and Suffolk Downs in Boston. We’re going to have a great season in 2025. We’re the managing partner at Forest Hills Stadium, and if you look at from when we came on in 2021 or 2022 post-COVID to where we were before, everything is just humming out there. We’re back booking CMAC in Rochester [N.Y.]. We’re involved in Westville in New Haven [Conn.], a couple of venues down in the Richmond, Va., area. There’s a couple of larger outdoor projects that are going to hopefully shake out for us in the next year or two. Under the K Bridge — the Kosciuszko Bridge between Queens and Brooklyn — this past year, it tended to all be DJs. I think you’re going to see a little broader programming in 2025 and beyond. It’s a unique New York moment where it feels kind of wild and lawless. Meanwhile, it’s very much by the book, permitted and done properly. People that walk in there are just like WTF, and then there’s actually porta johns. You’re not peeing in a bush. Although a few people did, just for the record.
In the debate over whether ticket prices are too high, the response is often “Maybe, but the cost of touring has skyrocketed.” Who should be making a little less money?
MOORE Everybody should make a little less. Everybody is making more [now], but, genuinely, from the bus to the hotel, to our landlord to the electric company, rentals, etc., everything has gone up. We don’t know how realistic it is for everything to go down. I would much rather someone go to two shows in a year than pull every single dollar out of them for one. Back in the early 2000s, Jim and I would see civilians at shows that we recognized and say hello to them — not because we knew them personally, but because they came to a lot of shows as fans. And I’m seeing less of that.
Jay-Z’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, expects the rap mogul to be cleared of any wrongdoing in the coming days in the lawsuit filed earlier this month accusing him and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl at a 2000 MTV Video Music Awards afterparty.
Spiro hosted a press conference at Roc Nation’s headquarters in New York City on Monday afternoon (Dec. 16) where he defended his client’s innocence in the case while laying out a slideshow aiming to poke holes in the apparent inconsistencies of Jane Doe’s filing made by attorney Tony Buzbee.
Spiro chose not to unmask the now 38-year-old woman from Alabama who filed the complaint but chose to sharply criticize her case and her attorney. “This is not for truth and justice,” Spiro said. “This is for money.”
He continued: “When something isn’t real, when something doesn’t happen, you’re going to get the details wrong because you weren’t really there. [It’s] not possible. It’s because this never happened.”
According to her complaint earlier this month, the accuser got a ride from Rochester, N.Y. to New York City as a 13-year-old in 2000 to attend the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall, where she remained outside and later came into contact with Diddy’s limousine driver.
Doe claims she was taken to a “large white residence” about 20 minutes from the award show venue where she was served a drink and then repeatedly sexually assaulted by Diddy and Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) while another unnamed celebrity watched the rape take place. She says she then escaped the afterparty and made it to a gas station where she allegedly called her father to pick her up.
Jay-Z’s lawyer Alex Spiro hosted a press conference vehemently defending his client against the rape allegations made in the lawsuit. “It’s because this never happened,” he repeated. pic.twitter.com/XHfONUIMcd— LordTreeSa🅿️ (@LordTreeSap) December 17, 2024
But in an interview with NBC News on Friday, the accuser admitted to multiple inconsistencies in her story. And in the same story, her father admitted he can’t recall picking up his daughter following the alleged traumatic events 24 years ago. “I feel like I would remember that, and I don’t,” he said. “I have a lot going on, but I mean, that’s something that would definitely stick in my mind.”
At Monday’s event, Spiro focused on those seeming shortcomings in the story: “[Jane Doe] said she’s at the party alone, this 13-year-old girl, and she finds herself in the room with the three most famous people at the party — just think about how unnatural, how little common sense that makes. And according to her, one of the witnesses is a female celebrity who’s just standing there watching the repetitive rape of a child,” Spiro added. “There’s an adult female in the room watching the rape of a child. Afterward, she says she runs out of the house naked — none of them notice that? None of them pay any notice? For 24 years, none of them has said anything?”
While Jay-Z is named alongside Diddy, who will remain behind bars until his trial in May, Spiro attempted to distance Hov from the embattled Bad Boy CEO.
“Mr. Carter has nothing to do with Mr. Combs’ case or Mr. Combs,” he stated. “They knew each other professionally for a number of years. Just like in all professions, people know each other. At music awards, they support each other. They go to the NBA All-Star Game, they support each other. That’s just how professions work. There is no closer association between any of them — that’s also a matter of fiction.”
According to Spiro, Jay is “upset” about what he views as a baseless lawsuit. “He’s upset that somebody would be allowed to do this, would be allowed to make a mockery of the system like this,” he continued. “He’s upset that this distracts and dissuades real victims from coming forward. He’s upset that his kids and family have to deal with this. And he should be upset.”
In an earlier response statement, Jay-Z denied the allegations against him and called Buzbee a “deplorable human.” At Monday’s event, Spiro hinted at further legal action being taken against Buzbee, who he said “will be dealt with” separately following the lawsuit.
In an exclusive statement to Billboard on Tuesday (Dec. 17), Buzbee claimed that “Mr. Spiro has a history of making threats against opposing lawyers.”
Buzzbee continued: “We won’t be intimidated and will raise his conduct with the relevant entities. As for us, we will continue to conduct ourselves professionally. The only reason this dispute is in the public sphere is that Mr. Spiro filed a frivolous case against my firm and claimed extortion with absolutely no support for such an outlandish claim. We will file the appropriate paperwork in due course.”
To achieve the bright sound in his famous 1965 solo for The Who‘s “My Generation,” John Entwistle bought a cheap Danelectro bass, removed the strings designed by John D’Addario Sr., and transferred them to his Fender. The plan worked until one of the strings broke — and Entwistle had to buy two more Danelectros just for the strings.
Jim D’Addario, who built a multimillion-dollar guitar-strings empire on the foundation of his late father John’s early innovations, tells this story in a 50th-anniversary video series called Jim’s Corner. D’Addario, which sells drumheads, saxophone reeds, pedalboards, earplugs and other musicians’ gear in addition to its signature guitar strings at 3,300 retail outlets, earned $220 million in global revenue last year and employs 1,100 people, has taken a corporate victory lap throughout, combining history with “When You Know You Know” ads starring younger players like Chris Stapleton, Herman Li of DragonForce and Yvette Young of Covet.
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“Most people are very apathetic about their strings, and they usually listen to their teacher, or an artist that’s endorsing the product, to get them to try our strings,” says D’Addario, now chairman of the board of the company he named after his family in 1974. “The ones that know really know ours are better — and consistent.”
In addition to the video series, the company that started with teenaged Jim accompanying his guitar-playing father to music-business trade conventions in the ’60s launched a beer, Eddie Ate Dynamite (GoodBye Eddie), in early December; held a beer-launch party at the time starring a member of the Infamous Stringdusters; and spent much of 2024 releasing limited-edition merch and packages of strings in retro containers.
D’Addario acknowledges the company faces industry headwinds — the musical-instrument business, he says, is declining 2%-3% per year, which affects a company whose guitar strings make up 45% of its business. “People buy a guitar for their kid, and if he doesn’t play, they don’t put it in the attic or the basement anymore. They put it on eBay,” D’Addario says. “Everything a dealer sells, he’s going to compete with that instrument. That has had a very serious effect on the instruments bought at retail.”
But mostly, D’Addario is upbeat, describing the guitar pedalboards his company has spent two years designing, pedalboard power supplies containing USB batteries and coated strings that resist “moisture, perspiration, skin, debris.” Says D’Addario, “We keep an ideation list for each brand. We’ll have crazy things on there. When we have bandwidth, we’ll throw one on the active-project list.” Here, he discusses the company’s past and present in an hourlong Zoom from his home workshop in Farmingdale, N.Y.
What do you hope people learn about D’Addario from the 50th-anniversary campaign events?
It’s not the 50th anniversary of the family making strings, it’s the 50th anniversary of the brand name D’Addario. My dad and my grandfather were afraid to put their name on products. Italians would be discriminated against and it was a difficult name to pronounce. They felt like, in certain markets, it might not be accepted. In August of ’74, I said, “Nah, we’re going to get credit for making certain stuff, and our name’s going to be on it.”
Can you hear when a guitar player on the radio uses your strings?
No, that’s impossible. There are a lot of good strings out there that sound good. It’s very hard to discern that just from listening to it on the radio.
In the early 1990s, a package of strings had an envelope for each of the six strings — a paper envelope for each one, identified for each note, in a vinyl pouch with a fancy label. So there was a minimum of eight pieces of packaging; sometimes there was a little advertisement as well. My daughter Amy was in high school, and they were studying environmental friendliness and recycling and packaging, and I was changing my strings on the bed and I had all this garbage when I was done. She said, “You should really do something about that, that’s really criminal, you’re putting so much junk in the waste-stream just to change a set of strings.”
So it got me thinking. I came up with a system of color-coding the ball end on the string a different color, then coiling those together in one corrosion-resistant plastic bag and having them color-coded, so the silver one is this note and the brass one is this note. It eliminated 75% of the packaging. Since that time, we’ve saved billions of trees and millions of pounds of carbon not released into the atmosphere. That was one of the things that distinguished our strings. That’s one way we can tell onstage if our strings are being used. Otherwise, it’s very difficult. You can put branding on the package but when they’re playing on stage you can’t see it.
What music stars are your most loyal customers?
A lot of jazz guys, like Pat Metheny, who’s a good buddy, and Julian Loge. But there’s also a whole contingent of new people that I might not know. John McLaughlin, Blake Mills, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Chris Thile of Nickel Creek, Sierra Ferrell, a mandolinist [who’s] going to be a superstar — those are the artists that really gravitate to our brand because they know they’re going to get the very best product.
How has the musical instrument market changed since you started?
It’s quite different. We also make drumheads and drumsticks and snare wires and guitar straps and cables. We make drumheads for acoustic drums and drumsticks and other accessories for drummers. The acoustic-drum market is 40-60% of what it was in 2004. Drums have been digitized. Instead of 20,000 drumheads a day, we’re only making 10,000. The other thing is the guitar was really the solo instrument, but it’s not anymore. You don’t hear a guitar solo in every hit; you hear repetitive rhythms and electronic sounds and synthesized sounds.
How much does this worry you?
We’ve seen this so many times — in the early ’90s, it was video games, and for three or four years, the guitar market didn’t have much growth. But then it came back. The acoustic guitar market was in the tank for the whole decade of the 1980s, and “MTV Unplugged” happened, then bingo, the acoustic guitar took off again. It always comes back.
What are your retirement plans, if any?
We don’t want to sell our business. Our family name is on the product. D’Addario strings are like the Titleist of golf balls, like Scotch Tape. When you walk into a music store, 40% to 50% of the strings on the wall are our brand, and that’s in almost every country around the world. I’d have trouble walking into a store and seeing my packaging screwed up or listening to people complaining about the quality.
Hugh Forrest has been promoted to president of South by Southwest, where he will continue to oversee programming and assume full leadership of an organization he’s worked at for 36 years. Previously co-president and chief programming officer, Forrest takes on this new role as Jann Baskett, the current co-president and chief brand officer, prepares to step down on Dec. 31. Baskett will transition into an advisory and project-based role.
As president, Forrest will focus on driving business growth and work closely with the board of directors, which includes co-founder Roland Swenson, Jay Penske (CEO of Penske Media, SXSW’s largest shareholder), and Amy Webb (CEO of the Future Today Institute). Forrest expressed his enthusiasm for leading SXSW into its next phase, emphasizing “the experience of connection, inspiration and discovery that we provide for so many different industries each March” and its role in fostering community globally.
Founded in 1987 by Swenson, Nick Barbaro, Louis Black and Louis Jay Meyers, SXSW has evolved into a globally renowned event in Austin. Swenson, who led SXSW for 36 years, became executive chairman in 2022. Over the past two years, Forrest and Baskett successfully navigated SXSW’s post-COVID recovery, including expanding the festival to Sydney and London.
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Baskett reflected on her time leading SXSW, sharing pride in her contributions alongside Forrest and the team. She praised the event’s mission of supporting creative individuals — “Never has that purpose been more necessary” — and expressed excitement about her ongoing involvement as an advisor. “SXSW continues to be a beacon of light for artists and change makers,” she said.
“I want to extend my gratitude to Jann Baskett for her leadership, commitment, and creative vision as Co-President of SXSW over the past few years,” said Jay Penske. “Her contributions have been key in evolving the festival. Looking ahead, we are confident that Hugh Forrest will continue SXSW’s long tradition of supporting innovators and artists, expanding our global footprint, and building upon the incredible foundation of the world’s premier gathering of creative minds.”
The Executive Leadership Team supporting Forrest includes co-founders Swenson and Barbaro, as well as chief culture & people officer Autumn Amescua, chief technology officer Justin Bankston, chief logistics officer Michele Flores, chiefpartnerships officer Peter Lewis, chief financial officer Leanna Rossman, general counsel Stevie Fitzgerald and executive vice president Darin Klein
Note: Billboard’s parent company PMC is the largest shareholder of SXSW and its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
Holiday music is a big business. It’s also a big source of litigation.
When Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” stormed back to the top of the Hot 100 this month, it wasn’t alone. Each of the current top five songs are holiday tracks, with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” in second and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” coming in fourth.
All those streams make for some serious royalty money. Lee’s perennial classic earned nearly $4 million in 2022, and even lesser songs like “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” typically earn hundreds of thousands per year. In 2018, Billboard estimated that the entire Christmas music genre raked in $177 million in the U.S. market alone – a total that has almost certainly grown in the years since.
And where popularity and money go, lawsuits usually follow. As veteran music industry attorneys are fond of saying: “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ”
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With the holidays right around the corner, Billboard is breaking down the many times that Christmas music has ended up in court – from Mariah’s ongoing copyright battle over “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to Darlene Love’s fights with streamers to repeated courtroom clashes over religious freedom. Here are the five big cases you need to know:
‘All I Want For Christmas Is’ … A Copyright Lawsuit
Carey’s 1994 blockbuster is THE modern holiday song – now re-taking the top spot on the Hot 100 for six straight years and earning a whopping $8.5 million in global revenue in 2022. So it’s no surprise that she’s facing a lawsuit seeking a cut of that cash.
Starting in 2022, Carey has faced copyright infringement allegations from songwriter named Vince Vance, who claims she stole key elements of “All I Want for Christmas is You” from his 1989 song of the same name. He claims that the earlier track, released by his Vince Vance and the Valiants, received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her now-better-known hit.
“Carey has … palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance wrote in his latest complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun.”
Unsurprisingly Carey’s lawyers see things differently. In a motion filed earlier this year seeking to end the case, her legal team argued that the two songs shared only generic similarities that are firmly in the public domain – including basic Christmas terminology and a simple message that’s been used in “legions of Christmas songs.”
“The claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like “Santa Claus” and “mistletoe,” and a few unprotectable pitches and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,” Carey’s attorneys wrote at the time.
With Christmas now looming, it looks like Vance might be getting a lump of coal in his stocking: At a hearing last month, the judge overseeing the lawsuit said she would likely side with Carey and dismiss the case.
Good Grief: ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ Sues Dollywood
Less than two months before Peanuts television producer Lee Mendelson passed away in 2019, his production company sued Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park – accusing the park of using the music from his “A Charlie Brown Christmas” without permission.
The songs of jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s legendary soundtrack to the 1965 television special, including classic originals as well as updated standards like “O Tannenbaum,” are firmly in the Christmas canon – and none more so than “Christmas Time Is Here,” which Guaraldi co-wrote with Mendelson.
In a lawsuit lodged in federal court, Lee Mendelson Film Productions Inc. accused Dollywood of using that song for decades in Christmas-themed theatrical production without proper licenses, calling it “willful copyright infringement” and “blatant disregard” of the law.
As is often the case in such lawsuits, Dollywood had secured a blanket license from BMI to publicly play millions of songs for its guests, but would have needed a separately-negotiated “dramatic license” to use it in a stage play: “Defendant knew from the beginning of its infringement that its performance license from BMI does not cover ‘grand’ or ‘dramatic’ rights,” the company wrote.
With a trial set to kick off in December 2021, both sides agreed to a confidential settlement that summer to resolve the case.
Concert Clash: Holiday Cheer or State Religion?
Do Christmas concerts at public schools violate the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state? It’s a question that’s been fought in court many times – and when a federal appellate judge weighed it in 2015, she didn’t miss the opportunity to sprinkle holiday references into her opinion.
For decades, Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana held an annual winter concert centered on an “elaborate, student‐performed nativity scene,” featuring religious songs (including “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head”) along with a narrator reading passages from the New Testament.
Unsurprisingly, after students and parents sued in 2014, a federal district court ruled that such an overtly Christian show violated the First Amendment and its ban on the establishment of a state religion. But when the school later made substantial changes — removing the bible readings and adding songs representing Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, among others — both the district judge and an appeals court said the new version of the show passed constitutional muster.
In her 2018 appellate opinion, Judge Diane Wood waxed poetic – saying that “since ancient times, people have been celebrating the winter solstice” and that the Concord High case put the court “in the uncomfortable role of Grinch.”
“But we accept this position, because we live in a society where all religions are welcome,” Judge Wood wrote. “The Christmas Spectacular program Concord actually presented in 2015 — a program in which cultural, pedagogical, and entertainment value took center stage — did not violate the Establishment Clause.”
Baby Please: Darlene Love Sues Over Her Voice
Before Mariah was the “Queen of Christmas,” that title was sometimes used for Darlene Love – and the original queen hasn’t been afraid to enforce her rights to her iconic holiday tracks “A Marshmallow World” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
Back in 2016, attorneys for Love filed a lawsuit against Google over allegations that the tech giant used “Marshmallow” without permission in advertisements for its Nexus smartphones. A few months later, she filed a nearly-identical lawsuit against cable network HGTV, accusing the channel of using “Come Home” in another set of ads.
Darlene Love photographed on November 14, 2020 in Spring Valley, NY.
Mackenzie Stroh
Those might sound like copyright lawsuits, but they weren’t. Instead, Love accused the companies of violating her so-called right of publicity by using her voice in the commercial, claiming that her voice was so well known that using the songs falsely implied she had endorsed those products.
“Defendant’s actions were despicable and in conscious disregard of Love’s rights,” her lawyers wrote at the time. “Defendant turned her into an involuntary pitchman for programs of dubious quality. Defendant created multiple commercials that falsely implied to the public that Love had endorsed HGTV’s programming.”
If successful, the cases could have raised difficult issues for advertisers who want to feature popular songs in their commercials — potentially requiring that they both clear the copyrights to the music and obtain explicit permission from any famous performers. But the litigation never got far: Love dropped her lawsuits later that year.
‘Christmas in Dixie’ Royalties Battle In Australia
When a singer-songwriter named Allan Caswell filed a lawsuit claiming that the country band Alabama had stolen key elements of their 1982 country hit “Christmas in Dixie” from his earlier song “On The Inside,” the case came with a twist: He wasn’t actually suing the band itself.
Instead, he filed his lawsuit against his own music publisher, Sony ATV Music Publishing Australia, for failing to collect royalties from the allegedly copycat song. According to an iteration of the lawsuit filed in 2012, the publisher’s musicologist concluded years earlier that the two tracks “shared a level of similarity” that went beyond a “random occurrence of sheer coincidence.”
But why sue Sony and not Alabama? According to Caswell, it was that the American band was also signed to another unit at Sony – and he claimed that his publisher was refusing to take action as a result.
“That’s the problem,” Caswell told a local TV station in Australia. “I’m signed to Sony ATV. Alabama is signed to Sony Music. So it’s all in-house. There’s no incentive for them to take action. They basically can’t take action because they’d be suing themselves.”
In 2014, an Australian judge dismissed claims by Caswell, ruling there was no evidence that Alabama frontman Teddy Gentry had ever heard “On The Inside” before he wrote his Christmas track. “I am satisfied that it is unlikely that he could have heard the plaintiff’s song by picking it up from the theme music of episodes of Prisoner,” the judge said at the time.
Jailhouse Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
If you were subjected to “constant” holiday songs for 10 straight hours every single day while serving a prison sentence, you might file a lawsuit too.
That’s what an Arizona inmate named William Lamb did in 2009, accusing Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio (yes, that Joe Arpaio) of violating his constitutional rights with a non-stop slate of Christmas tunes at a Tucson correctional facility.
According to Lamb, the prison swapped out regular television programming in favor of “constant Christmas music,” which was played in the facility “continuously and repeatedly” from 9 am to 7 pm. The playlist included secular tracks like Elmo & Patsy‘s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and The Chipmunks, but also the Tabernacle Choir singing traditional Christmas carols.
In his lawsuit, Lamb alleged that holiday music marathons “forced him to take part in and observe a religious holiday without being given a choice,” violating the First Amendment. Arpaio argued back that the music served a secular purpose, aimed at “reducing inmate tension and promote safety in the jails” during a “difficult time of year for inmates.”
In a ruling just a week before Christmas in 2009, a federal judge agreed – saying the music served a valid non-religious purpose and didn’t primarily push religion on the inmates.
“Although Plaintiff asserts in his complaint that the purpose of the music was to force him to participate in a religious holiday, he does not explain how playing the music had a primary effect of advancing religion,” the judge wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, some of the music was religious, but the Supreme Court held [in earlier cases] that some advancement of religion does give rise to an Establishment Clause violation. A remote or incidental benefit to religion is not enough.”
Music Business Year In Review
LONDON — The music business is calling on the U.K. government to robustly protect copyright and “safeguard against misuse” by technology companies in any future regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
On Tuesday (Dec. 17), the British government launched a 10-week consultation on how copyright protected content, such as music, can lawfully be used by developers to train generative AI models.
The proposals include introducing a new data mining exception to copyright law that would allow AI developers to use copyrighted songs for AI training, including commercial purposes, but only in instances where rights holders have not reserved their rights. Such an opt out mechanism, says the government proposal, gives creators and rights holders the ability to control, licence and monetize the use of their content – or prevent their works being used by AI developers entirely.
The consultation also recommends new transparency requirements for AI developers around what content they have used to train their models and how it was obtained, as well as the labelling of AI-generated material.
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Policymakers will additionally seek views from stakeholders on the protection of personality and image rights, and whether the current legal framework provides sufficient protection against AI-generated deepfake imitations.
“Currently, uncertainty about how copyright law applies to AI is holding back both sectors from reaching their full potential,” said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in a statement announcing the consultation. “It can make it difficult for creators to control or seek payment for the use of their work, and creates legal risks for AI firms, stifling AI investment, innovation, and adoption.”
The government said that its proposed changes to copyright law will give clarity to AI developers over what content they are legally allowed to use when training generative AI models and “enhance” creators’ ability to be paid for the use of their work.
Before any new exceptions to copyright law can be introduced, further work would need to take place to ensure transparency standards and the mechanisms for rights holders to reserve their rights are “effective, accessible and widely adopted,” said DCMS.
“This government firmly believes that our musicians, writers, artists and other creatives should have the ability to know and control how their content is used by AI firms and be able to seek licensing deals and fair payment,” said Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a statement. “Achieving this, and ensuring legal certainty, will help our creative and AI sectors grow and innovate together in partnership.”
The start of the government’s long-awaited consultation on AI policy comes amid heightened lobbying from both the creative and technology industries. On Monday, a coalition of rights holders, including record labels, music publishers and artist groups, came together to call for copyright protection to be at the heart of any U.K. AI legislation.
The newly formed Creative Rights in AI Coalition, whose members include U.K. record labels trade body BPI, umbrella organization UK Music and the Music Publishers Association, wants policymakers to draw up AI laws that permit a “mutually beneficial, dynamic licensing market” built around “robust protections for copyright.”
The creative industries coalition said any future AI legislation must ensure accountability and compliance from AI developers and tech companies, who it said have thus far been exploiting copyright protected works “without permission, ignoring copyright protections and clear reservations of rights.”
The U.K. creative industries generated around £125 billion ($158 billion) for the country’s economy last year, according to government figures, with the music industry contributing a record £7.6 billion, up 13% year-on-year, of that total, according to UK Music research.
The U.K. is the world’s third-biggest recorded music market behind the U.S. and Japan with sales of $1.9 billion in 2023, according to IFPI. It is also the second-largest exporter of recorded music worldwide behind the U.S.
“Without proper control and remuneration for creators, investment in high-quality content will fall,” said the coalition, which also includes the Association of Independent Music (AIM) and British collecting societies PRS for Music and PPL, as well as trade groups representing photographers, illustrators, journalists, authors and filmmakers.
“Just as tech firms are content to pay for the huge quantity of electricity that powers their data centres, they must be content to pay for the high-quality copyright-protected works which are essential to train and ground accurate generative AI models.”
In a separate statement, BPI CEO Jo Twist said the organization was looking forward to working with the government on developing its AI policy but said it remains the BPI’s “firm view” that introducing a new exception to copyright for AI training “would weaken the U.K’s copyright system and offer AI companies permission to take – for their own profit, and without authorisation or compensation – the product of U.K. musicians’ hard work, expertise, and investment.”
“It would amount to a wholly unnecessary subsidy, worth billions of pounds, to overseas tech corporations at the expense of homegrown creators,” said Twist in a statement. She went on to say that opt-out schemes in other markets similar to what is being proposed by the U.K. government have been shown to increase legal uncertainty, “are unworkable in practice, and are woefully ineffective” in protecting creators’ rights.
The government’s recommendation to introduce a new copyright exception for AI training is an idea that it has floated before – and received strong push back from the music industry to. In 2021, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) was heavily criticized by artists, labels and publishers for suggesting a new text and data mining (TDM) exception that would have allowed AI developers to freely use copyright-protected works for commercial purposes (albeit with certain restrictions).
Those proposals were quietly shelved by the government the following year but progress on any U.K. legislation governing the use of AI has been slow to arrive. In contrast, the 27-member block European Union, which the United Kingdom officially left in 2020, passed its world-first Artificial Intelligence Act – requiring transparency and accountability from AI developers – in March.
Meanwhile, other major music markets, including the United States, Japan and China are advancing their own attempts to regulate the nascent technology amid loud opposition from creators and rights holders over the unauthorized use of their work to train generative AI systems.
Earlier this year, the three major record companies – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — filed lawsuits against AI music firms Suno and Udio alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale” Sony Music and Warner Music have additionally issued public notices to AI companies warning them against scraping their copyrighted data.
More recently, in October, thousands of musicians, composers, actors and authors from across the creative industries – as well as all three major record labels – signed a statement opposing the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI. The number of signatories has since risen to more than 37,000 people, including ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, all five members of Radiohead and The Cure’s Robert Smith.