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copyright infringement

Rapper Plies is suing Megan Thee Stallion, GloRilla, Cardi B and Souja Boy for copyright infringement over allegations that the 2024 song “Wanna Be” features an uncleared sample from his 2008 track “Me & My Goons.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court, says the Megan and GloRilla stole Plies’ material indirectly – that they used a legally-licensed sample of a Soulja Boy song that itself illegally borrowed from “Goons.”

“Defendant Soulja Boy authorized Megan thee Stallion and GloRilla to sample [his song,]” lawyers for Plies write. “[Wanna Be] incorporates substantial elements of the copyrighted material underlying ‘Me & My Goons,’ without authorization from plaintiffs.”

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“Wanna Be,” released by Megan and GloRilla in early April, debuted at No. 11 on the Hot 100. A remix, featuring Cardi, was released in late May. The song features a prominent sample of Soulja Boy’s 2010 track “Pretty Boy Swag,” which spent 16 weeks on the chart that summer.

Plies (Algernod Washington), best known for his 2007 singles “Shawty” and “Hypnotized,” names all four stars (Megan Pete, Gloria Woods, Belcalis Almanzar and Deandre Way) as defendants in the lawsuit, as well as various companies and labels allegedly involved in the song.

Reps for the defendants did not immediately return requests for comment.

Lawsuits like the one Plies filed Wednesday – claiming that a legal sample featured an unlicensed sample – sound strange but aren’t uncommon. In the modern music industry, all samples in major releases are strictly cleared, and even borderline interpolations are often licensed to avoid any risk of litigation. But copyrighted material featured within the sampled songs can be trickier to identify.

Last month, a lawsuit filed by Barry White’s estate claimed that Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” sampled from a 1980s hip-hop song that had ripped off White’s music. And in May, a little known New Orleans group sued Beyoncé for the same thing over a sample of Big Freedia featured in “Break My Soul,” though they dropped the case several months later. White’s case remains pending; the case against Beyoncé was quickly dropped.

Read the entire lawsuit here:

Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group have filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings, including tracks by Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, ABBA, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, DJ Snake, Aqua and more. The companies are seeking “at least $500,000,000” in damages. 
In a complaint filed Monday evening (Nov. 4) in Manhattan federal court by Andrew Bart and Gianni Servodidio at Jenner & Block, UMG, ABKCO and Concord Music Group accuse Believe of being “overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and pirate record labels” and distributing copies of those fraudulent recordings to various streaming services and social media sites. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that “Believe makes little effort to hide its illegal actions” and that the allegedly infringing recordings are “often minor variants on the names of… famous recording artists and titles of their most successful works.” The complaint says the alleged fraudsters attempt to avoid detection of the allegedly infringing recordings — some of which, they claim, are “sped up” or “remixed” versions of popular songs — by using misspellings of popular artist names, including “Kendrik Laamar,” “Arriana Gramde,” “Jutin Biber” and “Llady Gaga.” 

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“Believe is fully aware that its business model is fueled by rampant piracy” in “pursuit of rapid growth,” the lawsuit claims, adding that the company has “turned a blind eye” to the infringing content that makes its way to social media and streaming services through its platform. 

Additionally, lawyers for UMG and the other plaintiffs say that “Believe has taken advantage of the content management claiming system” on YouTube “to divert” and “delay… payment of royalties” that belong to the record labels. It is “telling,” they add, that after YouTube resolves these conflicts regarding the rightful ownership of these sound recordings, “Believe continue[s] to distribute the exact same track to other digital music service providers and to seek royalties for use of that track from those providers.”

This is not the first time bad actors have been accused of using YouTube’s content management system to claim royalties that are not rightfully theirs. In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists. To facilitate claiming those royalties, the two men, operating under the company name MediaMuv, used AdRev, a rights management firm owned by Downtown. 

“Believe is a company built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,” said a spokesperson for UMG in a statement. “Their illegal practices are not limited to cheating artists on major labels but artists on independent labels as well — including artists on the independent labels within the trade bodies of which Believe is itself a member. It’s no wonder that Believe has been outspoken against the streaming reform principles for which so many major and independent labels have been advocating. Why? Because such reforms would undermine and expose their system of building scale and market presence by distributing music for which they have no rights and illegally collecting royalties to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators.”

The complaint specifically charges Believe with direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, direct infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings, contributory infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings and vicarious infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings.

Representatives for Believe and TuneCore did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.

It’s been a busy year for TuneCore’s parent company Believe. On March 1, the French music giant, which was publicly traded on the Euronext Paris stock exchange, announced that its board of directors had approved the move to take it private and that there was an “interested party” looking to acquire it. First, however, the bidder was requesting due diligence information and financial data ahead of making a formal bid. Later that month, the name of the bidder was revealed when it was announced that Warner Music Group (WMG) had issued a formal notice to disclose its interest in acquiring Believe, which also owns publishing administrator Sentric as well as labels like Naïve, Nuclear Blast and Groove Attack.

In early April, however, WMG called off its plans to submit a formal offer. The label did not elaborate on its decision, stating only that it was made “after careful consideration.” On April 19, Believe’s board of directors announced it was supporting an offer to take the company private at 15 euros ($15.98) per share from a consortium of funds managed by TCV, EQT X and Believe chairman/CEO Denis Ladegaillerie. The board’s three independent members unanimously voted in favor of an opinion that the bid was in the interest of minority shareholders. 

Fraud and copyright infringement have been hot-button issues in the music business as the industry becomes more and more democratized, offering anyone the opportunity to release music in hours — sometimes minutes — at the click of a button. In response, TuneCore, along with CD Baby, Distrokid and other competitors, set up “Music Fights Fraud,” a coalition designed to stop bad actors from hopping from service-to-service to release songs they don’t own the rights to. A number of initiatives, including Credits Due, have since launched to try to fix metadata problems in the music business that can leave artists susceptible to royalty stealing and fraud, particularly on sites like YouTube. 

Still, despite these efforts, TuneCore and other DIY distributors have been accused of allowing bad actors to use their sites to upload infringing or fraudulent content. In August 2020, Round Hill Music’s publishing arm sued TuneCore for “willful and unauthorized use” of 219 of their sound recordings. And in 2022, Billboard reported that some music executives believe Create Music Group games the system on YouTube to claim royalties, with one label source claiming the company was doing so “egregiously.” 

Just last month, TikTok also rang the alarm bell about fraudulent content when it backed out of licensing negotiations with Merlin, a coalition of indie labels and distributors, to allegedly curb users uploading works they don’t own the rights to on the platform. TikTok said it would instead pursue individual licensing deals with labels and distributors that it considered to be safe.

Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” did not infringe the copyright to Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” a federal appeals court ruled Friday (Nov. 1), saying the two songs share only “fundamental musical building blocks” that cannot be owned by any single songwriter.
In a ruling issued more than a decade after Sheeran’s chart-topping hit was first released, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected an infringement lawsuit filed by Structured Asset Sales, a company that owns a small stake in the rights to Gaye’s song.

The case argued that Sheeran’s song copied a chord progression and rhythm from Gaye’s, but the appeals court said the lawsuit was essentially seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”

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“The four-chord progression at issue—ubiquitous in pop music—even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” a panel of appeals court judges wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”

Looking at the two songs more broadly, the Second Circuit also ruled that Sheeran’s track was clearly not similar enough to Gaye’s to amount to copyright infringement: “Neither the melody nor the lyrics of ‘Thinking Out’ Loud bears any resemblance to those in ‘Let’s Get It On.’ Undeniable and obvious differences exist between them.”

Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 46 weeks on the chart. He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. That case ended in a high-profile trial last year, resulting in a jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing.

The case decided on Friday is a separate lawsuit filed by SAS, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different one-third stake in Townsend’s copyrights — meaning a one-ninth stake in the rights to Gaye’s iconic track. In May, weeks after the big jury verdict, a federal judge tossed out the SAS lawsuit, ruling that it was seeking an “impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”

In upholding that decision on Friday, the Second Circuit echoed the earlier ruling’s concern about overprotecting copyrights and threatening future songwriting.

The chord progression and harmonic rhythm at issue in the case are “garden variety” elements that had been used in numerous songs, the appeals court said, pointing to evidence that they had appeared in “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers and “Since I Lost My Baby” by The Temptations — two tracks that predated Gaye’s song by years. The appeals court noted that there is a “limited number of notes and chords available” and that “common themes frequently reappear.”

“In the field of popular songs, many, if not most, compositions bear some similarity to prior songs,” the court wrote, quoting from a treatise on copyright law. “So while a similar chord progression and harmonic rhythm may create a similar sound and feel, that is not enough.”

The ruling is a major victory for Sheeran, but the battle over “Thinking” isn’t quite over yet. SAS also has another lawsuit against Sheeran pending, advancing an unorthodox effort to cite a more expansive copyright covering the sound recording to “Let’s Get It On” rather than the written music. That case has been paused while the earlier lawsuit played out.

In a statement to Billboard following Friday’s decision, SAS owner Pullman criticized the appeals court for citing “two songs out of over 60 million registered songs” in its analysis. And he stressed that the decision had not addressed his company’s arguments relying on a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision about federal regulatory power.

Sheeran’s attorney, Donald Zakarin of the law firm Pryor Cashman, told Billboard that he and his clients were “gratified” by the court’s ruling: “This ruling is consistent with the jury’s rejection of any claim of infringement in the [earlier] case, finding that Ed and Amy independently created ‘Thinking Out Loud.’”

Universal Music Group (UMG) has filed a lawsuit claiming Chili’s used more than 60 copyrighted songs from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and others on social media without permission, just months after the Beastie Boys accused the restaurant chain of the same thing.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (Oct. 10) in Manhattan federal court, the music giant accused Chili’s owner Brinker International Inc. of willfully using unlicensed music in dozens of promotional videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

“In order to draw the attention of consumers in the fast-moving world of social media, defendants chose to rely on the use of popular music as an integral part of their Chili’s messaging,” UMG’s lawyers write. “But despite this success, defendants have failed to pay plaintiffs for the music that serves as the soundtrack for Chili’s social media ads.”

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In addition to Grande and Bieber, UMG says the videos featured music from dozens of other stars, including Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, Lana Del Rey, ABBA, Luke Bryan, Travis Scott, Bruno Mars, Lil Nas X, Earth Wind & Fire, The Weeknd and more.

The new case comes less than three months after Chili’s was accused of largely the same thing by the Beastie Boys. In that case, which remains pending, the iconic rap trio accuses the restaurant of using their 1994 smash “Sabotage” online, including in a video that mimicked the song’s 1970s-themed music video.

Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on television.

That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years.

Beginning in 2021, all three major labels sued drink maker Bang Energy for using hundreds of copyrighted songs in promotional TikTok videos, with Universal and Sony eventually winning large judgments. In May, Sony filed a case against Marriott over accusations that the hotel chain had used nearly 1,000 of its songs in social media posts. And in July, Kobalt and other publishers sued more than a dozen NBA teams over the same thing.

In Tuesday’s case against Chili’s, UMG argued that a sophisticated company with more than 1,600 restaurant locations would have known that it needed sync licenses to use well-known music in ads — or at least that it should have known.

“Defendants include successful companies promoting multiple restaurant franchises with their own legal departments and protecting their own intellectual property interests,” UMG’s lawyers write. “Despite defendants’ prior history of licensing music from plaintiffs for use in commercials, defendants did not seek to determine which of the videos at issue in this complaint used plaintiffs’ musical works.”

Brinker did not immediately return a request for comment.

Barry White’s estate is suing over allegations that a prominent sample at the heart of Future and Metro Boomin’s chart-topping “Like That” infringes the copyright to a 1973 song by the legendary singer — but they aren’t accusing the stars of any wrongdoing.
In a complaint filed last week in Manhattan federal court, White’s estate claimed that a 1986 hip-hop song called “Everlasting Bass” by the duo Rodney-O (Rodney Oliver) & Joe Cooley stole key elements from White’s 1973 song “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby.”

Attorneys for the White estate say they waited nearly four decades to sue over the song because it was “released prior to the internet and was not widely distributed,” leaving the estate “unaware of the song when it was first released.”

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White’s heirs are certainly aware of “Everlasting” now, and it’s not hard to guess why: The song was heavily sampled in “Like That,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 earlier this year — so prominently that Future and Metro Boomin credited Rodney-O & Joe Cooley as co-writers.

By using an infringing sample, the lawsuit claims that “Like That” also infringes White’s copyrights: “‘Like That’ copies substantial elements of ‘I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More, Babe’ … including but not limited to the iconic, immediately recognizable bass line,” the estate wrote in its Thursday (Oct. 3) complaint.But crucially, the White estate isn’t accusing Future, Metro Boomin or co-creator Kendrick Lamar of any legal wrongdoing. The lawsuit pins the blame solely on Rodney-O & Joe Cooley, saying they agreed to defend the stars against such accusations when they cleared the sample.

The duo did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawsuit’s allegations.

Released in March as the third single off Future and Metro’s collaborative album We Don’t Trust You, “Like That” reigned at No. 1 for three weeks and spent another 28 weeks on the chart. At the time of its debut, most of the focus was on the lyrics — since the track was one of the early salvos in the diss war between Kendrick and Drake.

But the underlying music featured a sample from “Everlasting Bass,” a classic early hip-hop track that’s also been sampled by Three 6 Mafia, Lil Wayne and E-40. In an April interview with Vibe, Rodney-O said he loved what Future and Metro did with his song.

“It is crazy because the song was big when it came out and for it to be even bigger now all these years later, it’s crazy,” he said. “I heard the song, I knew it was good, but when it comes out and the world hears it how you hear it and react to it the way you reacted to it, that’s confirmation.”

As for White’s song, “Gonna Love You” is one of the legendary singer’s top commercial hits, peaking at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in June 1973 and ultimately spending 18 weeks on the chart.

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Nelly burst onto the scene in 2000 with his debut album Country Grammar and rolled with the St. Lunatics group comprised of his childhood friends from his hometown of St. Louis. Nelly now faces a lawsuit alleging that he failed to credit the St. Lunatics for their hand in crafting his debut album.
As reported by Variety, Nelly, real name Cornell Haynes, is facing a copyright infringement for what the St. Lunatics say is uncredited and unpaid work that went into the making of Country Grammar.

The St. Lunatics collective includes Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Torhi Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan), and City Spud (Lavell Webb). The group filed the lawsuit earlier this week in New York federal court.
The outlet overlooked the lawsuit which said that Nelly and the St. Lunatics were friends since grade school and began writing songs together in the 1990s. They then signed separately to deals at Universal Music Group and the lawsuit claims that the St. Lunatics contributed heavily to Country Grammar. Their side said they tried to negotiate with Nelly regarding the crediting and were allegedly told things would move forward but in 2020, they discovered they were duped and that he took full credit for their work.
The St. Lunatics said they learned of their missing credits after Willie Woods Jr. filed a lawsuit in 2020 demanding royalties for his contributions to the hit single “Ride Wit Me” which opened the door for the latest legal actions. It appears that Nelly himself didn’t shoot down the St. Lunatics but instead, his legal representatives, which promoted the group to assert that the rapper never intended to give them proper credit.

Photo: Getty

More than nine months after Mariah Carey was again sued for allegedly stealing her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” from an earlier song, her attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that the songs share nothing but commonplace musical building blocks.
In November, songwriter Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) filed a second lawsuit against Carey accusing her of copyright infringement, arguing that her 1994 smash “was a greater than 50% clone…in both lyric choice and chord expressions” of his 1989 song of the same name, which was performed by his group Vince Vance and the Valiants (a similar lawsuit Vance filed in 2022 was subsequently dropped without prejudice, meaning he was allowed to refile). He was joined in the November action by Troy Plaintiff, who claims to have co-written the song with Vance.

But in documents filed in Los Angeles federal court on Monday (Aug. 12), attorneys for Carey and her co-defendants, including “All I Want” co-writer Walter Afanasieff, contend that Vance’s claims fail the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s “extrinsic test for substantial similarity in protectable expression” — essentially arguing that any similarities between the two songs are coincidental.

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“Plaintiffs’ claimed similarities between Vance and Carey are unprotectable…because they are, among other things, fragmentary and commonplace building blocks of expression that Vance and Carey use differently in their overall different lyrics and music,” the filing reads.

In the November lawsuit, Vance and Powers argued that the two songs share a “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey allegedly copied for her mega-hit, which has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the holiday season for five years running. They also claimed that despite how common it is today, the phrase “all I want for Christmas is you” was a “distinctive” one back when Vance and Powers’ song was released.

But Carey and her co-defendants argue that the plaintiffs “lack competent evidence that the songs share any protectable expression.” They add that reports produced by two musicologists Vance and Powers retained to bolster their case “list isolated, fragmentary similarities in Vance and Carey, while omitting differences and the context in which the claimed similarities occur,” making their conclusions “inherently subjective” and “irrelevant to the objective extrinsic test.”

“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,” the lawyers write.

A representative for Vance and Powers did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment.

Ye (formerly Kanye West) is facing another lawsuit accusing him of illegal sampling, this time over allegations that he incorporated an instrumental track into two songs from Donda even after he was explicitly denied permission.
The case, filed Wednesday (July 17) in Los Angeles federal court, claims that Ye borrowed elements from a song called “MSD PT2” for his own “Hurricane” and “Moon” — both of which reached the top 20 on the Hot 100 when they were released in 2021.

Filed by a company that owns the rights to the earlier song, the case claims that when Ye was refused a license to use it, he simply “decided to steal it.”

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“This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee,” writes Oren Warshavsky and other attorneys from the law firm BakerHostetler, representing the plaintiffs. “It is about the rights of artists, musicians, and songwriters to determine how their works are published and used. Intellectual property owners have a right to decide how their property is exploited and need to be able to prevent shameless infringers from simply stealing.”

In an act of particularly “blatant brazenness,” the lawsuit claims that Ye even credited the song’s four creators — Khalil Abdul-Rahman Hazzard, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff and Josh Mease — as songwriters despite their refusal to work with him.

Wednesday’s case was filed not by the artists themselves, but by a company called Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), which owns the copyrights to “MSD PT2.” Lawyers for the company say the four artists turned to ARA after they “unsuccessfully attempted to collect their share of the proceeds from these songs” for nearly three years.

A spokesperson for Ye could not immediately be located for comment on the new case.

The new allegations come less than a month after Ye settled a separate lawsuit filed by the estate of Donna Summer over a very similar accusation. In that earlier case, Summer’s estate claimed the rapper had used her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” in his own “Good (Don’t Die)” despite a similarly explicit refusal.

“Summer’s estate … wanted no association with West’s controversial history and specifically rejected West’s proposed use,” the estate’s attorneys wrote at the time. “In the face of this rejection, defendants arrogantly and unilaterally decided they would simply steal ‘I Feel Love’ and use it without permission.”   

Even before the two recent cases, Ye has been sued repeatedly for uncleared samples and interpolations in his music.

In 2022, Ye was hit with a lawsuit claiming his song “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions; accused in another case over allegations that he used an uncleared snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers”; and sued in a different case by a Texas pastor for allegedly sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.”

Before that, West and Pusha T were sued in 2019 for sampling George Jackson‘s “I Can’t Do Without You” on the track “Come Back Baby.” That same year, he was sued for allegedly using an audio snippet of a young girl praying in his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam.” Further back, West was hit with similar cases over allegedly unlicensed samples used in “New Slaves,” “Bound 2” and “My Joy.”

The Beastie Boys are suing the owner of Chilis over allegations that the restaurant chain used the rap trio’s iconic 1994 song “Sabotage” in a social media advertisement without permission.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday (July 10) in Manhattan federal court, the hip-hop legends accused Brinker International of infringing their copyrights by using the song without a license — an especially serious allegation from a trio that famously doesn’t allow its music to appear in ads.

“Use of the ‘Sabotage’ sound recording, music composition and video was all without permission,” the group’s attorneys write. “The plaintiffs do not license ‘Sabotage’ or any of their other intellectual property for third-party product advertising purposes, and deceased Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch included a provision in his will prohibiting such uses.”

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The Beastie Boys says the Chilis ad in question featured three men in “70s-style” wigs, fake mustaches, and sunglasses carrying out a “robbery” of food ingredients from a Chilis. The group says it clearly “intended to evoke” the music video to “Sabotage,” a parody of 1970s “crime drama” television programs that featured Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Michael “Mike D” Diamond and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch in similar attire.

The band’s lawyers say using the song was bad enough, but that by recreating a video that featured “unauthorized video impersonations of Diamond, Horovitz and Yauch, Brinkers also violated federal trademark law by duping consumers with a false endorsement.

“The public was confused into believing that plaintiffs sponsored, endorsed and are associated with defendant Brinker in promoting defendant Brinker’s ‘Chili’s’ restaurants and products,” the lawsuit reads.

A spokesperson for Brinker did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Beastie Boys are infamously protective of their music when it comes to advertising, a stance underscored by the fact that Yauch’s will featured a provision prohibiting the use of his image, music and any art he created in advertising.

In 2013, the group sued a toy company called GoldieBlox after it released a viral parody of the group’s 1987 song “Girls” to promote its engineering and construction toys for girls, eventually winning a settlement in which the company apologized and donated a portion of its revenues to charities. And in 2015, the group won a $1.7 million verdict against Monster Energy over a video used by the energy drink company that used several of the group’s songs in a promotional video.

But they’ve also given certain uses of their music their blessing. In 2016, “Sabotage” appeared in a trailer for Star Trek Beyond; the next year, the group permitted the song to be used in an advertisement for the video game Destiny 2. Though those were advertisements, both of them were promoting artistic works rather than products.

Cardi B (born Belcalis Almanzar) has been sued for copyright infringement by Joshua Fraustro and Miguel Aguilar, who make up producer duo Kemika1956, alleging that the Grammy-winning rapper used their “Greasy Frybread” track without permission in her hit single “Enough (Miami).” According to court documents filed in Texas federal court on Wednesday (July 3), Fraustro […]