Lawsuit
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The-Dream is the latest entertainer to be slammed with a lawsuit alleging several serious crimes from a former understudy who claims she was subjected to sexual abuse, battery, and more. Chanaaz Mangroe claims in her lawsuit that The-Dream promised to guide her singing career but instead used his position and power to abuse and torture her.
TMZ was able to obtain the court documents filed by Chanaaz Mangroe, which detail some of the heinous acts she was allegedly subjected to. Mangroe, who hails from the Netherlands, says in her lawsuit that The-Dream, real name Terius Nash, took it upon himself to extend her work visa in 2014 in order to help grow her career in the States.
What transpired instead, according to Mangroe, was a yearlong abusive relationship with Nash using his age and influence to control her actions.
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She alleges she was locked in a dark room where The-Dream “violently” had sex with her, leaving her naked and alone “for hours on end” before returning for another encounter.
The aspiring singer goes on to claim she was “frequently strangled” by Dream during their sexual encounters … almost losing consciousness on a number of occasions.
Further, Mangroe says that Nash would record their sexual encounters and allegedly used that as leverage to keep her silent as it was assumed he could leak the footage publicly.
So far, the legal team for The-Dream has yet to respond to the allegations.
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Travis Scott is asking a federal judge to end a lawsuit accusing him of using unlicensed samples on songs from Utopia and Astroworld, arguing that nobody can claim a copyright on the words “alright, alright, alright.”
The case was filed in February by Dion Norman and Derrick Ordogne, who claim that Scott and Sony Music illegally borrowed a portion of their song “Bitches Reply” — an oft-sampled 1992 track that’s previously been used by Lil Wayne, Cardi B, Kid Cudi and others.
But in a motion to dismiss the case filed Monday (June 3), lawyers for Scott and Sony argue that the allegations were centered on the “untenable” claim to ownership over basic words — “alright, alright, alright” — that everyone should be free to use.
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“The only alleged copyright infringement here is the alleged copying of the word ‘alright’,” the star’s attorneys write. “But the single word ‘alright’ and the short phrase ‘alright, alright, alright’ lack even the minimal creativity required for copyright protection both because these lyrics are too short and because they are commonplace, or stock, expressions.”
Released in 1992 by DJ Jimi, “Bitches Reply” has reportedly been sampled or interpolated in dozens of songs, including tracks by Megan Thee Stallion, Drake and OutKast. Most of those samples have come from a staccato burst of the word “alright” shouted nine times at the beginning of the song.
Norman and Ordogne, who say they co-wrote DJ Jimi’s song and own the copyrights to it, claimed in their February lawsuit that Scott sampled from that portion of the track twice — first in his 2018 song “Stargazing” off the Astroworld album, and again in his 2023 “Til Further Notice” off Utopia.
But copyright law only protects “original” works, and that typically doesn’t include short phrases that are already widely used. In Monday’s response filing, Scott’s lawyers say that a repetition of a common word like “alright” in song lyrics was exactly that — too “trite” and “cliched” to meet copyright law’s basic requirements.
They cite numerous other songs that had featured the phrase before “Bitches Reply” was even released, including “Revolution” by The Beatles, Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright” and Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove.” They also cite a 2003 ruling in which a federal judge ruled that T-Pain’s “Put It Down” didn’t infringe copyrights by using phrases like “I can’t get enough” and “raise your hands in the air.”
“The Copyright Act does not protect ‘stock’ expressions,” Scott’s lawyers write. “Because the allegedly infringed phrase “Alright, Alright, Alright” is too commonplace to be copyrightable, Plaintiffs’ copyright infringement claims should be dismissed.”
Monday’s motion also made various other attacks on Norman and Ordogne’s lawsuit, including that they failed to show that they own the proper copyright registrations and filed the claims over “Stargazing” past the statute of limitations.
An attorney for Norman and Ordogne did not immediately return a request for comment. Their lawyers can file a formal response to Scott’s motion in the coming weeks.
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Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is the latest entertainer to be slapped with a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. A former assistant who worked with Ye claimed in the suit that the Chicago superstar sent her explicit texts and videos, later splitting their arrangement and failing to pay a severance package.
As reported by TMZ, Lauren Pisciotta, a former OnlyFans model, was reportedly hired to work on the Yeezy fashion line in July 2021 according to the details found within the lawsuit. Pisciotta also claims she worked on three songs on Ye’s DONDA album. A year later, Pisciotta said the mercurial producer asked her to take down her OnlyFans account and vowed to replace her $1 million annual haul via salary to work for Yeezy.
However, it appears that Ye got too comfortable and began texting explicit messages to Pisciotta and also sharing videos of him having sex.
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There’s one interesting alleged text Pisciotta claims he sent her that went something like this … “Is my d*** racist? It is. This f***ing racist d*** of mine. I going to beat this f***ing racist d*** for being f***ing racist. I’m going to stare at pictures of white woman with black asses and beat the s*** out of my racist d*** … Beating the s*** out of his big black c***.”
Pisciotta allegedly endured phone calls from her boss while he inquired about the penis size of her boyfriends and masturbated while on the phone among other heinous allegations.
News of the lawsuit went wide on social media with many noting Pisciotta looks somewhat similar to women Ye has dated in the past. According to Pisciotta, the pair never maintained a romantic connection while adding in her suit that after being fired in October 2022, she was allegedly offered a $3 million severance that remains unpaid.
Lauren Pisciotta is suing for breach of contract, sexual harassment, wrongful termination, and hostile work environment.
Keep scrolling to see reactions from X, formerly Twitter.
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1. Owes him a lawsuit?
2. We can’t confirm if this is an actual link to the court documents so proceed knowing this.
3. It should be obvious.
6. No, we don’t know what homie is trying to say here either.
10. Or chronically horny?
The-Dream, a singer and producer who has worked with Beyoncé, Rihanna and others, was hit with a sex trafficking lawsuit Tuesday (June 4) that accuses him of subjecting a young songwriter to an “abusive, violent, and manipulative relationship” that included an alleged incident of rape.
In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Chanaaz Mangroe claims the producer (Terius Gesteelde-Diamant) used promises of career advancement to lure a “young and vulnerable artist” into “a prolonged nightmare” filled with “violent sexual acts.”
“Over more than a year, Ms. Mangroe experienced trauma that she has still not recovered from—she is broken as an artist, constantly afraid for her physical safety, and plagued by reminders of the violence and control she experienced at the hands of Dream, who has continued his successful career unscathed by his horrific acts,” her attorneys write.
In addition to numerous allegations of violent sex, the lawsuit includes an allegation that The-Dream raped Mangroe in May 2015. Her lawyers say he pinned her down inside a sprinter van, started “forcibly having sex with her” and choked her so intensely that she potentially lost consciousness.
Representatives for The-Dream did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
In addition to five studio albums of his own, The-Dream has credits on a wide range of hits, including Rihanna’s 2007 smash “Umbrella” and Beyonce’s 2008 chart-topper “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” He’s also worked with Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Kanye West and numerous other stars.
Mangroe, a native of the Netherlands, claims that The-Dream reached out to her in 2014 when she was just 23 years old and working in the United States on an international visa. After she sent samples of her work, she says he invited her to Atlanta to work with him and his producing partner, Tricky Stewart.
Over time, her lawyers say The-Dream “used his age and influence in the industry to manipulate the young artist into believing that she needed him to be successful.” They say he promised to help her secure a visa extension, sign a record deal with a major label and even offered her a chance to open for Beyonce’s upcoming tour.
But in reality, her lawyers say The-Dream “used Ms. Mangroe for his base desires, which manifested in violent sexual acts and vicious psychological torture.” In addition to the alleged rape, they say he frequently subjected her to violent choking during sex, “berated” her during sex and used recordings of their sex to “threaten Ms. Mangroe into silence.”
“Nearly a decade later, Ms. Mangroe is still putting the pieces of her life back together, but she knows that without speaking up about what Dream did to her, she will never be able to heal from the harm he has caused,” her lawyers write. “She therefore brings this lawsuit to speak up for herself and other female artists who have been tormented by powerful and selfish men in the recording industry.
In addition to The-Dream, the lawsuit also names Sony Music’s Epic Records as a defendant, arguing that the producer’s “depraved behavior” was facilitated by the company. The lawsuit claims Epic “benefited from facilitating his behavior to the extent it kept their relationship with the talented musician viable and ensured continued profit from his work.”
Reps for both Epic and parent company Sony Music did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by Douglas Wigdor, a New York attorney known for representing alleged sexual assault victims. Wigdor’s firm has filed numerous abuse cases against music industry figures in recent months, including the bombshell case against Sean “Diddy” Combs filed by his ex-partner Cassie.
Megan Thee Stallion is firing back at a lawsuit that claims the superstar forced a cameraman to watch her have sex with a woman inside a moving vehicle, calling them “false and fabricated” allegations filed by a “con artist.”
In a scathing first response to the April accusations, attorneys for Megan (Megan Pete) said that Emilio Garcia’s lawsuit “consists almost entirely of falsehoods, misrepresentations of fact, and outlandish claims that have no basis in fact or law and no merit.”
“Plaintiff is a con artist who is manipulating the judicial system to act as his publicist and bullhorn in a desperate attempt to boost his failed singing career while trying to tear down the successful career of Megan Thee Stallion,” wrote the star’s attorney, Alex Spiro.
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In his lawsuit last month, photographer Emilio Garcia accused the superstar and Roc Nation of subjecting him to a hostile work environment due to the alleged car-sex incident, which he says took place while on tour in Spain in 2022. Garcia claims the incident left him “embarrassed, mortified and offended,” and that Megan and Roc Nation later retaliated against him by reducing his work and eventually terminating him.
But in Thursday’s response, Spiro painted a very different picture — of a former contractor who was terminated after he repeatedly “falsified his invoices and overcharged Ms. Pete for services he never completed.”
“Angry at the loss of this high-profile gig and his exile from the inner circles of stardom, plaintiff filed a factually and legally frivolous Complaint,” Megan’s attorneys wrote. “Plaintiff took a run of the mill wage and labor dispute and trumped up his frivolous claims with sensationalist false allegations of sex, debauchery, and workplace harassment for the sole purpose of creating a media firestorm to tarnish the career and reputation of Ms. Pete.”
Beyond rebutting the lawsuit’s allegations, Megan’s attorneys also argued Thursday that the case was filed in entirely the wrong place. In a motion seeking to have the case moved to federal court, they argue the case has “absolutely no connection to California state court” — citing the fact that Garcia lives in Texas and Megan lives in Florida.
“Plaintiff was more concerned with staging his lawsuit in an improper forum than accurately pleading the facts underlying his claims,” Megan’s lawyers wrote.
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
Madonna is facing another class action lawsuit over delayed concerts on her Celebration Tour, this time from a ticket buyer who also claims she forced fans to watch “pornography” during the show.
Like several previous cases, the new lawsuit claims that the Queen of Pop violated false advertising laws by taking the stage more than an hour later than expected, leaving fans to wait in an “uncomfortably hot” arena and get home later than expected.
But the new case, filed in Los Angeles on Wednesday (May 29) by a fan named Justen Lipeles, also includes a bold new accusation: that Madonna should have warned fans that the show would include “topless women” who were “engaging in simulated sexual acts.”
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“Forcing consumers to wait hours in hot, uncomfortable arenas and subjecting them to pornography without warning is demonstrative of Madonna’s flippant disrespect for her fans,” lawyers for the aggrieved fan wrote. “Plaintiff felt like he was watching a pornographic film being made.”
Madonna and promotor Live Nation are already facing similar cases in New York and Washington, D.C., over claims that late starts to her Celebration concerts broke the law. Both were filed as class actions, seeking to represent potentially thousands of other fans who also faced the alleged delays.
The New York case, focused on December shows at the Barclay Center, made headlines because it claimed the fans “had to get up early to go to work” the next day — a claim Madonna’s lawyers have since argued is not the kind of “cognizable injury” that can form the basis for a lawsuit. The D.C. case, targeting tour dates at the District’s Capital One Arena, added claims that the arena was “uncomfortably hot” and that she had lip-synched portions of the show.
In his new lawsuit, Lipeles echoed all of those claims about Madonna’s March 7 performance at the Kia Forum. He claims he paid more than $500 per ticket for a show that was supposed to start at 8:30 p.m. but that Madonna didn’t take the stage until after 10 p.m., leaving fans to wait in an arena that was overheated due to “Madonna’s requirement that venues not turn on air conditioning.”
“Plaintiff and members of the class were profusely sweating and became physically ill as a result of the heat,” his lawyers write. “When fans complained about the heat, Madonna unreasonably told them to take their clothes off.”
When the show finally did start, Lipeles claims, “it was apparent to plaintiff that Madonna was lip synching” during “most of the performance.” And he says he was given no warning that “there would be nudity and pornography on stage during Madonna’s concerts.”
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Madonna of breaching her contract with ticket buyers, negligent misrepresentation, false advertising and several other forms of legal wrongdoing under California law.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday (May 29) that a sprawling copyright lawsuit can move forward with accusations that nearly 2,000 reggaeton songs — including hits by Bad Bunny, Karol G and dozens of others — all infringed a single 1989 song that allegedly spawned the so-called “dem bow” rhythm.
The huge infringement case, filed by Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, claims that their 1989 song, “Fish Market,” was the source of dem bow — the boom-ch-boom-chick, boom-ch-boom-chick percussion featured in nearly every reggaeton song.
Demanding that the case be dismissed, Bad Bunny’s lawyers argued last year that Steely & Clevie’s massive case “seeks to monopolize practically the entire reggaetón musical genre for themselves” by claiming copyright control over “unprotectable” musical elements.
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But in the lawsuit’s first key decision, Judge André Birotte Jr. denied that motion on Wednesday, ruling that it was too early in the case to make those kinds of complex rulings and that Steely & Clevie had made a strong enough argument to move forward: “It is premature at this stage to find that the musical elements alleged are insufficiently original or indeed unprotectable.”
Notably, the judge also hinted that he might not be particularly receptive to such arguments when it’s time to rule on them. At one point, he warned that he “rejects” the idea that the massive success of a particular song could be used as a “double-edged sword” that would also void its copyrights.
“The court recognizes the practice of musical borrowing, and in doing so, cannot merely conclude that because the reggaeton genre (or artists) have purportedly borrowed significantly from attributes of plaintiffs’ work that those attributes are now in effect commonplace elements,” Judge Birotte wrote.
First filed in 2021 against just a handful of defendants, Steely & Clevie’s lawsuit has steadily grown to cover more and more artists and songs. In the latest iteration, the duo’s lawyers name more than 150 artists, also including Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber, plus units of all three major music companies.
Steely & Clevie’s lawyers claim that over 1,800 reggaetón songs featuring iterations of the dem bow rhythm were, at root, illegally copied from “Fish Market” — and that their clients deserve monetary compensation for them. Potentially damages are difficult to calculate, but could easily reach into the billions if the case is successful.
In Wednesday’s decision, Judge Birotte also rejected other arguments from the defendants beyond the core question of whether dem bow could be protected by copyright law.
For instance, in a June filing, attorneys for Daddy Yankee and the major labels argued that the case was so massive that it had become procedurally unfair. They called it a “shotgun pleading,” filled with so many vague accusations that it was “impossible for defendants to determine what each is alleged to have done.”
But in Wednesday’s decision, Judge Birotte said he was “unconvinced” by that argument — and that Steely & Clevie’s 228-page complaint had sufficiently laid out the case to satisfy procedural requirements.
Following Wednesday’s ruling, the case will proceed toward discovery, where both sides will exchange evidence, take depositions and seek expert testimony on complex questions relating to musicology. If the judge does not decide the case after discovery, the two sides will head to trial.
Neither side in the case immediately returned requests for comment.
Cher has won her lawsuit against Sonny Bono’s widow over royalties to “I Got You Babe” and other hits after a federal judge ruled that Mary Bono must continue paying the superstar her cut under the couple’s decades-old divorce settlement.
More than 20 years after Sonny’s death, Mary argued that she no longer needed to pay royalties to Cher thanks to copyright law’s so-called termination right — a provision of federal law that allows songwriters and their heirs to win back control of their intellectual property rights decades after they gave them away.
But in a decision issued Wednesday (May 29), Judge John A. Kronstadt ruled that the federal termination rules do not trump Sonny and Cher’s 1978 divorce settlement, which gave the singer a permanent 50% cut of the publishing revenue from songs written before the couple split up.
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The ruling means that Cher will continue to receive publishing royalties for her catalog of songs created with Sonny, including “The Beat Goes On” and “Baby Don’t Go.” According to Wednesday’s ruling, more than $400,000 in royalties owed to Cher have piled up since the dispute began.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment.
Sonny and Cher started performing together in 1964 and married in 1967, rising to fame with major hits like “I Got You Babe,” “The Beat Goes On” and “Baby Don’t Go.” But the pair split up in 1974, finalizing their divorce with a settlement in 1978. Under that deal, Sonny retained ownership of their music rights, but Cher was granted a half-share of all publishing royalties in perpetuity.
That agreement stayed in effect for years, including after Bono died in a 1998 skiing accident. But in 2016, Mary and other heirs invoked the termination right, seeking to take back control of Sonny’s copyrights from his publishers. And in 2021, they informed Cher that they would soon stop paying royalties under the earlier agreement.
Cher quickly sued, seeking a ruling that she was still owed her 50% cut regardless of who owns the copyrights since a federal copyright provision had no bearing on a state-law asset settlement. Mary fired back a few months later, claiming that termination rights could not be waived by contract and that Cher’s arguments would “subvert” the purpose of the law.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Kronstadt sided with Cher’s arguments. He ruled that the divorce settlement with Sonny gave Cher a “contractual right to receive financial compensation,” rather than the kind of control over his copyrights that could be voided using the termination right: “A right to receive royalties is distinct from a grant of copyright,” the judge wrote.
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Beyoncé and Big Freedia are the subject of a new lawsuit. A group claims the two lifted elements from their project for “Break My Soul”.
As reported by Digital Music News a four person music collective feels that their work has been infringed upon by Beyoncé. Back in 2002 Da Showstoppaz recorded a single titled “Release A Wiggle” as per a suggestion from one of their colleagues. Surprisingly the song started to pick up traction in their local neighborhood in New Orleans and the group started to perform shows. The group would dissolve in 2004 after Hurricane Katrina ravished the city.
“Break My Soul” features some words from Big Freedia where she says “Release ya wiggle” multiple times on the outro. This single also samples Big Freedia’s 2014 track “Explode” where the Bounce Music pioneer says “Release ya wiggle” throughout the chorus. According to the filing submitted on behalf the group both works infringe on their break out song. “‘Explode’ infringes on Da Showstoppaz’ ‘Release A Wiggle’ twelve times,” the document reads. “As the infringing phrase ‘release yo’ wiggle’ and several other substantially similar phrases are featured prominently in the song. Any reasonable person listening to ‘Release A Wiggle’ and ‘Explode’ would conclude that the songs are substantially similar.”
Neither Beyoncé or Big Freedia have yet to publicly address the matter. You can listen to “Explode” and Da Showstoppaz “Release A Wiggle” and compare below.
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The Department of Justice dropped a wide-ranging antitrust complaint against Live Nation on Thursday (May 23), highlighting more than a dozen examples of the company’s “anticompetitive and exclusionary” behavior in accusing it of operating live music’s largest monopoly.
The evidence looks particularly bad for Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino, whose own emails are being used against him to document alleged threats made against competitors while the company was operating under a federal consent decree tied to its 2010 merger with Live Nation.
Under the arrangement, regulators with the government had the right to obtain company documents, including communications, without a subpoena. The most damaging evidence is an email exchange involving Oak View Group’s Tim Leiweke and mega music manager Irving Azoff, who co-founded the arena development and management company together.
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Leiweke was the CEO of AEG, Live Nation’s main rival in the concert business, until 2012, when he was fired by company owner Phil Anschutz. After a brief stint running the Toronto Maple Leafs and its sports and entertainment interests in Canada, he returned to the United States and eventually founded Oak View Group (OVG) in 2015.
The government claims Rapino tried to leverage his company’s partnership with OVG to pressure private equity firm Silver Lake to kill off a rival ticketing company that Rapino allegedly believed represented a major threat to Ticketmaster.
If true, the story could be a major problem for Rapino, underscoring the government narrative that despite Live Nation’s massive market share, the CEO operates the company like a paranoid pugilist, willing to cross ethical and legal boundaries to eliminate tiny threats.
Silver Lake has been OVG’s strategic investment partner since the company’s founding, investing $100 million to launch it. Today, it has more than $2.5 billion tied up in OVG development projects. Silver Lake also owns TEG, an Australian concert promotion company that operates Ticketek, a large Australian ticket provider with more than 130 clients.
According to the 120-page complaint filed Thursday in federal court, “In 2021, Live Nation’s CEO complained to Oak View Group’s co-founder that TEG was ‘[f]ull on competitors.’ Oak View Group, in turn, conveyed to Silver Lake that Live Nation was ‘not happy.’” The complaint adds that Rapino then escalated his complaints to Silver Lake directly, stating: “I am all in on [Oak View Group] where the big play lies with venues – why insult me with this investment in ticketing/promotions etc.’”
According to the lawsuit, “Rapino threatened to pull its support from Oak View Group and instead back an Oak View Group competitor unless TEG stopped competing with Live Nation in the United States,” the complaint alleges.
“I can assure you the OVG investment is a much bigger win then T[E]G,” Rapino wrote in an email to an unnamed Silver Lake executive that’s included in the lawsuit. “It’s been a huge win for both sides– we have over 20 global arenas in development that neither could do without the other … do you really want LN backing [AEG’s venue development and management company]…? Seems like a dumb trade off??”
To aid in the pressure campaign, Azoff “reportedly refused to allow TEG to promote any of his large roster of artist clients,” the complaint alleges. It further states that Azoff told Rapino “that he was going to demand that Silver Lake sell TEG. [To which] Live Nation’s CEO replied ‘Love ya.’”
“Silver Lake now seems ‘intent on dumping teg’ and has asked, through the founder of Oak View Group, whether Live Nation would be interested in purchasing TEG,” the complaint reads in describing the back-and-forth.
Live Nation did not purchase TEG, but in early 2023, a deal was brokered for Silver Lake to sell the company to investment companies Blackstone and KKR. That deal collapsed in October over disagreements over the valuation of the company, which is now being readied for an IPO in Australia.
Live Nation issued a statement on this allegation, stating that the “claim reveals not only a disregard for the facts, but also deep hypocrisy.”
“The current DOJ and FTC have been vocal critics of private equity companies making multiple investments in the same industry because of competitive ‘entanglements,’” the statement continues. “So was Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino when, after it had already made an investment in OVG, Silver Lake Partners decided to invest in the Australian live entertainment company, TEG. Rapino’s complaint was fundamentally the same as the DOJ/FTC concern with private equity rollups: it created a conflict between OVG, which had become a close partner to Live Nation, and TEG. So, in December 2021 when a TEG employee wrote to say that it did not intend to compete with Live Nation in the U.S., Rapino replied to Silver Lake’s management that he did not care about TEG, but still had a problem with Silver Lake’s decision to make multiple conflicting investments in the industry.”
The statement also claims that “there is no truth that this brief exchange had anything to do with Silver Lake’s decision to sell its stake in TEG.”
In addition to the allegations around TEG, the government’s complaint further alleges that OVG, when it was first founded in 2015, was “particularly well-suited to be a real competitor to Live Nation in the United States concert promotion business” but changed its model to avoid competing with Live Nation.
The evidence from the time, however, shows that OVG and Live Nation had long billed themselves as partners. A November 2015 press release announcing OVG’s launch includes a quote from Rapino endorsing Leiweke’s business model, stating, “Both Tim and Irving are friends of Live Nation as well as personal friends. The concept of creating an economic model for both arena’s and touring artists that creates new revenue streams and develops an ‘anchor’ type of platform for music is one we share.”
The DOJ claims that Live Nation initially identified OVG as one of its “Biggest Competitor Threats” but that over time, the two firms morphed “from competitors into partners who found it easier and mutually beneficial to work together rather than compete.”
According to the government, OVG in fact operates as “a self-described ‘pimp’ and ‘hammer’ for Live Nation, with Leiweke once telling Rapino ‘[j]ust like I tell our folks we 100% always protect you and LN on your lanes.’”
In 2016, “after learning that Oak View Group offered to promote an artist Live Nation had previously promoted, Live Nation’s CEO immediately emailed Oak View Group, warning that such competition would only lead to artists demanding more compensation,” reads the complaint. It further includes an email in which Rapino wrote of the artist: “Whats up? We have done his [touring] and vegas[.] Let’s make sure we don’t let [the artist agency] now start playing us off.”
As outlined in the complaint, Leiweke immediately responded, “Our guys got a bit ahead. All know we don’t promote and we only do tours with Live Nation.”
Azoff later chimed in, writing “Growing pains,” subsequently noting that OVG executives “should never discuss comp [for artists],” and that OVG’s talent buyers would work for Live Nation.
The government argues that this discussion is an example of Leiweke and Azoff colluding with Rapino to limit the competitive bids sent to an artist in order to keep artists fees low. In another example cited in the complaint from 2022, Rapino admonished Leweike for making a direct offer to an artist to play an OVG venue instead of asking Live Nation to promote the show for OVG.
“Who would be so stupid to do this and play into [the artist agent’s] arms”? Rapino asked Leiweke in the email. Leiweke responded, “We have never promoted without you. Won’t,” before later writing, “[m]ore than happy to do these deals thru LN as I have always been aligned,” and that “I never want to be competitors.”
The complaint also alleges that Live Nation “exploits its long-term relationship with Oak View Group to flip venues to Ticketmaster, further cementing Ticketmaster’s power.”
According to the DOJ, in 2022, Live Nation and OVG signed an unspecified agreement that resulted in OVG recognizing “it has a significant financial interest in maintaining existing Ticketmaster contracts at its venues and converting other venues to Ticketmaster.”
At some point, according to the lawsuit, Leiweke told Rapino that the deal “allows us to tie up all owned and operated facilities to 10 year deals, develop a standard A and B market deal for all future projects and to convert all OVG 360 deals to TM now or as they expire for 10 years… Appreciate the consideration and partnership and all of us will work diligently on this so we are always aligned with TM.”
Live Nation responded to this claim in a statement: “The theory is that the contract gave Ticketmaster an unfair advantage in securing the business of independent venues that were managed by OVG because it creates financial incentives for OVG to ‘advocate for’ Ticketmaster. But there is nothing remotely anticompetitive about that. Commercial arrangements that involve incentive or marketing payments are common throughout this industry (and many others).” The statement adds, “Ticketmaster competed and won the contract on the merits because OVG determined it was the best ticketing system available.”