Legal News
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The federal judge presiding over the Department of Justice’s sweeping antitrust case against Live Nation thinks the trial can begin as early as March 2026, according to recent federal court filings.
Judge Arun Subramanian explained Thursday (June 27) in the case’s first pre-trial hearing that he hoped jury selection could begin that month, although he stopped short of setting a firm date.
One of the first items of business for Subramanian, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2023, is to rule on a planned motion by Live Nation to move the case from the Southern District of New York to the federal circuit court in Washington, D.C., where Live Nation’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster was first approved. Subramanian said he believed his court could properly preside over the case but that he would fully consider the advisement.
Prior to being appointed to the federal bench, Subramanian was a partner at litigation firm Susman Godfrey LLP, which currently represents Live Nation in the 2021 Astroworld festival class action lawsuit. Subramanian did not work on that case.
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Government attorneys said in a Tuesday (July 25) filing that they plan to bring additional claims against Live Nation, noting the new claims could include information that attorneys from Live Nation have designated as highly confidential and might ask the courts to seal.
Attorneys for the government “do not believe any of the information at issue merits sealing or overcomes the presumption of public access to judicial documents,” the filings explain, noting that if Live Nation doesn’t budge, the government will ask the judge to rule on the matter.
Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers also complained that Live Nation attorneys have delayed discovery requests and failed to “fully comply with any of the United States’s three pre-complaint civil investigative demands” dating back to October 2022.
“It took Defendants nearly a year to start producing custodial documents,” the filing reads, noting that “their responses to many specifications remain incomplete today.”
Lawyers for Live Nation called the government’s discovery allegation false, noting that “since October 2022, Defendants have spent over 200,000 attorney hours reviewing documents, produced over 600,000 documents from nearly 70 custodians, produced over 33 million observations of data, submitted dozens of written responses, and provided investigative deposition testimony from three high-level executives in response to Plaintiffs’ investigations. In addition, DOJ has access to nearly two million documents that Defendants produced during prior investigations.”
Attorneys for Live Nation added that they want “any documents, data or testimony Plaintiffs received from third parties during their investigation” no later than July 22, 2024.
Live Nation is also challenging the government’s unusual request for a jury trial instead of having the verdict determined by a judge. “If it occurred, it would be the first jury trial ever in a government-brought monopolization case,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
Outside of Live Nation, the government also says it plans to issue more than 100 third-party subpoenas to “ticketers, promoters, ticket brokers, venues, venue management companies, artists, and artists’ agents and managers.”
Live Nation declined to comment for this story.
Live Nation is being represented by longtime attorney and litigator Timothy L. O’Mara and Alfred C. Pfeiffer, both partners at Latham and Watkins. Pfeiffer is the former co-chair of the firm’s Antitrust & Competition Practice. Ticketmaster is represented by David R. Marriott with Cravath, who successfully represented Illumina against the Federal Trade Commission and secured a 2022 victory for the Louis Dreyfus Company against DOJ efforts to block the sale of Imperial Sugar to U.S. Sugar.
The government is represented by Bonny Sweeney, who joined the DOJ in 2022. Sweeney formerly served as a partner at San Francisco firm Hausfeld where she was co-chair of its U.S. antitrust practice group. In 2023, she was named antitrust lawyer of the year by the California Lawyers Association.
Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton are facing a lawsuit over their launch of a high-end line of “Pocket Socks,” filed by a California company that says it’s been using that same name for more than a decade on a similar product.
In a case filed last week in Los Angeles federal court, Pocket Socks Inc. says the luxury brand’s product — a literal sock-with-a-pocket that launched at Paris Fashion Week last year and sells for the whopping price of $530 — infringes its existing trademark rights to the name.
“Much attention and publicity has been generated for Louis Vuitton’s ‘Pocket Socks,’ including defendants, the press, and consumers using the name ‘Pocket Socks’ for their product which irreparably injures Pocket Socks’ longstanding brand and trademark rights,” the company’s lawyers write in the June 20 complaint.
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Louis Vuitton announced in February 2023 that Williams would serve as the company’s men’s creative director, and he debuted his first line for the company later that year at Men’s Fashion Week in Paris.
One of the items apparently rolled out at last year’s event was the Pocket Socks — a pair of knitted socks that feature a pocket adorned with a pearl. The socks received some notoriety in January when Jermaine Dupri was razzed on social media for wearing them during his Super Bowl halftime performance. Though currently unavailable for purchase, the socks are listed on Louis Vuitton’s UK website for £420 — roughly $530 in U.S. dollars.
Louis Vuitton’s new product didn’t sit well with Pocket Socks Inc., which says it’s been using that exact same name since 2012 for its own line of socks that feature a zippered pocket sewn into each pair. In its lawsuit, the company says it owns several federal trademark registrations for the brand and that the new product clearly infringes those rights.
In a statement announcing the new lawsuit, Pocket Socks Inc. claims Louis Vuitton’s new line “threatens to undermine the hard work and dedication” that has gone into building the brand: “This massive luxury brand and their designer Pharrell Williams should know better and behave within the law,” said CEO Evan Papel.
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Williams and Louis Vuitton of infringing both the trademark to the name as well as the so-called “trade dress” — meaning the actual look of the product. The sale of similar-looking socks under the same name is “likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive consumers,” the lawsuit claims.
As the case moves forward, one possible defense argument from Williams and Louis Vuitton could be that the name Pocket Socks is too “descriptive” to serve as a trademark. Under U.S. trademark law, terms that merely describe the goods or services being sold cannot be locked up as an exclusive brand name.
Neither a rep Williams nor Louis Vuitton immediately returned requests for comment.
Diplo is facing a civil lawsuit accusing him of violating “revenge porn” laws by sharing sexually-explicit videos and images of a former romantic partner without her permission.
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In a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, an unnamed Jane Doe accuser claimed that the DJ (real name Thomas Wesley Pentz) recorded their sexual encounters and shared the materials with others on Snapchat “without plaintiff’s knowledge or consent.”
“Plaintiff brings this action to recover for the emotional and physical injuries she endured because of Diplo’s actions and to make sure no one else is forced to suffer the privacy invasions and physical and mental trauma she felt and continues to feel to this day,” the woman’s attorneys write.
In her complaint, the woman claims she had consensual sexual relationship with the DJ from 2016 to 2023. During that time, she says she occasionally “gave defendant Diplo permission to record them having sex, but never gave him permission to distribute those images and videos to third parties and reiterated that he was not to record them without her explicit consent.”
“Plaintiff trusted defendant Diplo and believed that he would respect her wishes to keep their sexual images and videos confidential and that he would not record them having sex without her consent,” her lawyers write.
But last fall, the woman says she was contacted by someone claiming to be in possession of images and videos of “plaintiff and defendant Diplo having sex.” She says the materials, allegedly shared over Snapchat five years earlier, depicted her “genitals, buttocks, and face,” as well as her voice.
After the incident, Jane Doe says she reported Diplo’s actions to the New York Police Department, which later “issued a warrant for defendant Diplo’s arrest for dissemination of intimate images and/or videos depicting Plaintiff.”
In an email to Billboard, the NYPD confirmed that a report had been filed and that there was an active investigation, but declined to comment on the claims of an arrest warrant: “There is a criminal complaint on file for unlawful dissemination for a suspect with the name of Thomas Pentz which is currently being investigated by NYPD detectives.”
In 2022, when Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, lawmakers created for the first time a federal law banning the disclosure of “intimate” images without the consent of those depicted in them. The lawsuit accuses Diplo of violating that provision, as well as an earlier revenge porn law enacted by the state of California.
Both representatives and an attorney for Diplo did not return requests for comment.
Diplo was previously accused of revenge porn by another woman. In 2020, he was sued by a woman named Shelly Auguste over claims that he had distributed nude photographs of her without permission. His attorneys called it a “smear campaign” and sued her back for stalking, trespassing, and distributing private materials. That litigation is ongoing.
SiriusXM is facing a class action lawsuit that claims the company has been earning billions in revenue by tacking a deceptive “royalty fee” onto consumers’ bills.
In a complaint filed last week in federal court, attorneys for four aggrieved subscribers claim that SiriusXM adds a “U.S. Music Royalty Fee” – allegedly 21.4 percent of the actual advertised price – onto the normal price that users pay for satellite radio plans.
“This action challenges a deceptive pricing scheme whereby SiriusXM falsely advertises its music plans at lower prices than it actually charges,” attorneys for the users write. “SiriusXM intentionally does not disclose the Fee to its subscribers. SiriusXM even goes so far as to not mention the words ‘U.S. Music Royalty Fee’ in any of its advertising, including in the fine print.”
The lawsuit claims the royalty fee is an “invented” charge that SiriusXM has “deceptively” labeled to falsely suggest that it’s mandated by the government to pay for music rights. In reality, the lawsuit says, it’s a really just a “disguised double-charge for the music plan itself” that no other competing music services imposes on their users.
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“Reasonable consumers would expect that the advertised price for SiriusXM’s music plans would include the fundamental costs of obtaining the permissions necessary to provide the music content that SiriusXM has promised is included in those plans,” lawyers for the subscribers say.
According to the lawsuit, SiriusXM has reaped huge benefits from the “unlawful advertising scheme” since it was implemented in 2009, allegedly collecting $1.36 billion in such royalty fees in 2023 alone. In just in the states of Washington and Florida — the locations where the plaintiffs live — the lawsuit claims Sirius has collected $932 million in royalty fees since the charge was created.
And, according to the complaint, SiriusXM allegedly tries its best to ensure that consumers never find out: “SiriusXM’s sign-up process, automatic renewal process, and policy of not sending monthly or ongoing billing notices or invoices are deliberately designed to prevent subscribers from learning of the U.S. Music Royalty Fee.”
Those allegations echo claims made by New York’s attorney general, who sued SiriusXM in December over claims that the company made it “extremely difficult” for listeners to cancel their subscriptions. In a statement at the time, SiriusXM called those claims “baseless allegations” that “grossly mischaracterize” its customer service practices.
The new lawsuit was filed in the form of a proposed class action, aimed at eventually representing “millions of individuals” who have allegedly paid the royalty fee after seeing a lower price advertised.
“To be clear, plaintiffs are not seeking to regulate the existence or amount of the U.S. Music Royalty Fee,” lawyers for the subscribers wrote. “Rather, plaintiffs want SiriusXM to include the [fee] in the music plan prices it advertises to the general public.”
A representative for SiriusXM did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
Mathew Rosengart, a powerhouse litigator whose resume includes clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and a stint as a Department of Justice trial attorney, has a stable of high-profile Hollywood clients like Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Sean Penn and Casey Affleck. But it’s his work with Britney Spears in successfully freeing the pop superstar from a controversial, restrictive and highly scrutinized 13-year conservatorship that catapulted the Greenberg Traurig partner into something of a household name and globally recognized legal eagle.
In a swift four months, from July to November 2021, Rosengart dove headfirst into the probate court case after being handpicked by the singer herself with one goal in mind — to free Spears from the arrangement that limited her rights and left all life decisions in the hands of a team led by her father Jamie Spears. Rosengart accomplished that on Nov. 12, 2021, when L.A. County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny granted a petition to terminate the conservatorship. Over the past three years, Rosengart remained on the case to settle loose ends while resolving an ongoing legal dispute with the singer’s father, Jamie Spears, over his attorney’s fees. The latter matter was resolved two months ago, bringing a quieter end to the entire ordeal but delivering an exclamation point nonetheless.
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There’s no active litigation at this time, Rosengart has said. “As she desired, her freedom now includes that she will no longer need to attend or be involved with court or entangled with legal proceedings in this matter,” he explained in a statement issued on April 26.
As such, Rosengart is closing the chapter as Spears’ litigator of record as he shifts focus toward to other clients. “It has been an honor to serve as Britney’s litigator, to work with her to achieve her goals in obtaining the court-ordered suspension of her former conservator, followed by restoring her fundamental rights and civil liberties, while continuing to protect her and more recently to extricate her from all outstanding litigation and the byzantine probate court proceedings. As I’ve always said, the credit goes to Britney,” Rosengart says in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
Rosengart’s work with Spears over these past three years extended beyond the conservatorship as he emerged wearing many hats as a trusted counsel and point of contact in a number of high-profile negotiations and situations. It is understood, however, that his role in her life was always as a litigator and such an arrangement would always have an end date.
Rosengart played a key role in shepherding a number of deals and developments in Spears’ life. Those included a massive Simon & Schuster book deal for her best-selling memoir The Woman in Me, a prenuptial agreement and subsequent divorce with ex-husband Sam Asghari, a restraining order against ex-husband Jason Alexander (who attempted to crash her Asghari wedding) and more. In May, following an incident at Chateau Marmont that reportedly left her with an ankle injury, Spears credited Rosengart with helping her through the aftermath. “This man is wonderful!!! He’s like a father to me,” she posted. “I adore you and admire you mister Matthew!!!”
For his work, Spears has repeatedly and profusely praised Rosengart through multiple Instagram posts (her primary source of public commentary) and in The Woman in Me. Rosengart has also been hailed as a hero by the pop star’s legions of fans, a group that doggedly propelled the #FreeBritney movement. Though the attention, compliments and numerous accolades and awards may have been a surprise for Rosengart, it wasn’t completely new. Rosengart once triumphed on behalf of Penn in a defamation case against Lee Daniels, and the Oscar-winning actor has since praised his lawyer as a “tough-as-nails street fighter with a big brain and bigger principles.”
He previously told THR that he leaned on those principles when taking the case. “I’ve always detested bullying, even growing up,” he told THR. “Bullying a woman is even more unacceptable and abhorrent. It was troubling to me both personally and professionally, and I felt I could help stop it, as a lawyer and otherwise. That’s a pledge I made, and it was really rewarding to be able to help.”
Spears’ life started to change in June 2021, when, for the first time, the singer addressed the court herself, by phone, during a conservatorship hearing. Spears spent more than 20 minutes unloading to Judge Brenda Penny in a scorching declaration of life under the “abusive” restrictions she’d been under since 2008. “It is my wish and my dream for all of this to end,” said Spears who requested during prepared remarks that she be able to hire an attorney of her choosing rather than continue with conservatorship-approved counsel Samuel Ingham.
Within days, on July 10, 2021, Rosengart made his way to Spears’ residence where, in a pool house, they met to discuss a plan that would see the powerhouse litigator and former Department of Justice trial attorney to take the case. The court approved his appointment in July, and in a swift four months Spears’ wish was granted. On Nov. 12, 2021, Judge Penny granted a petition to terminate the 13-year arrangement in a landmark probate court decision, delivering a seismic shift for Spears that freed her from the conservatorship and opened her life in a way that left her future open ended.
Last October, California Gov. Mathew Rosengart signed Senate Bill 43 that updated the state’s conservatorship laws for the first time in half a century. The bill was designed to give individuals protected rights while also increasing transparency on the process.
When the conservatorship was terminated that day in November, Rosengart fielded a question from reporters outside the court house in Downtown Los Angeles. “What’s next for Britney?” asked a journalist, to which Rosengart replied, “What’s next for Britney — and this is the first time this could be said for about a decade — is up to one person: Britney.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
A California judge is refusing — for now — to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Village People against Disney that claims the Hollywood giant blackballed the legendary disco band from performing at Walt Disney World.
In a ruling issued Friday (June 21), San Diego County Superior Judge Katherine Bacal ruled that the Village People could move forward with the case, which accuses Disney of violating state laws and committing fraud by placing a “do not book edict” on the group.
Disney had argued that it has a First Amendment right to hire — or to not hire — any band it chooses, citing a special California law designed to protect free speech. But in her ruling last week, the judge said the company had failed to prove that the statute applied to the case.
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Importantly, the decision does not mean the Village People will win the lawsuit. Instead, Bacal merely rejected Disney’s request to dismiss the case at the earliest stage. The two sides will now proceed to discovery and an eventual trial, where the band will need to fully prove its claims.
A spokesperson for Disney did not immediately return a request for comment.
Karen Willis, the wife of Village People lead singer Victor Willis, filed the case in September, claiming that Disney had broken the law by “outright refusing to seriously consider the group” for bookings at the Orlando, Fla., theme park: “This unfair business practice by Disney denied Village People an opportunity to fairly compete for a slot to perform at Disney,” the complaint read.
Though the case targets Disney, the lawsuit appears to be rooted in a dispute between members of the original Village People lineup over who gets to perform under the iconic name.
According to court filings, Willis returned to the group in 2017 and formed a “re-vamped version” of the Village People — in the process, replacing an existing lineup that had been touring under the name for years. The case claims that the earlier iteration, featuring two other original members, “did not go away quietly,” and that they “took offense” when Willis’ Village People took over their existing slot at Disney World for a series of 2018 performances.
After the spurned members allegedly contacted Disney to complain and “started a campaign” against the new band, the lawsuit claims that Disney “engaged in a series of outrageous and egregious conduct,” including failing to provide security and refusing to properly pay the act.
After Willis complained about being “treated very badly” during the new band’s 2018 run at the park, the lawsuit claims, Disney has since refused to rebook the group — imposing an effective ban on performing at the theme park. The lawsuit includes claims of breach of contract, unfair competition, fraud and conspiracy.
Ahead of last week’s ruling, Disney had argued that the case must be tossed out under California’s so-called anti-SLAPP provision — a law designed to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits that threaten free speech. The studio argued that deciding which concerts to book was a form of constitutionally protected free speech rights and that it had the legal right to refuse to book the Village People.
Though Disney could very well still defeat the lawsuit, Bacal ruled on Friday that the company had failed to meet the specific legal requirements to use the anti-SLAPP law. In particular, the judge said Disney had failed to show that the dispute in the case was linked to the kind of “public conversation” that’s protected under the statute.
“There is no indication that defendants’ statements entered the public sphere,” Bacal wrote. “Defendants have not shown that the alleged statements contributed to or furthered the public conversation on an issue of public interest.”
LONDON — Scottish indie rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain and Robert Fripp, a founder member of British prog rock act King Crimson, are among a group of musicians and songwriters who have filed a joint lawsuit against U.K. collecting society PRS for Music over how it licenses and administers their live performance rights, accusing the organization of a “lack of transparency” and “unreasonable” terms for its members.
According to legal papers filed at London’s High Court, which have been viewed by Billboard, the 10 claimants are suing PRS for Music for damages resulting from what they describe as “unnecessary contractual requirements and practices.”
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These include PRS placing a number of “unreasonable” obstructions on members who wish to withdraw their live public performance rights and instead strike their own direct licensing deals with promoters, venues or festivals, say attorneys.
The claimants also accuse PRS for Music — which represents the rights of more than 160,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers — of charging higher administration fees to smaller acts than some of its most popular and highest-grossing songwriter members, thus creating a two-tier system where the most successful musicians are effectively being subsidized by the rest of PRS’s membership.
Such preferential treatment goes against the society’s mandate as a collective management organization, say the claimants. As part of their legal action, they cite internal PRS figures that, according to a spokesperson, indicate that rights holders participating in the organization’s Major Live Concert Service — which handles royalty administration for acts playing venues with a capacity of above 5,000 people — can pay an average administration fee effective to 0.2% while the wider PRS membership pays 23%, proportionately around 115 times more.
The lawsuit additionally accuses PRS of deliberately withholding information from its members about deductions from their royalty income when their rights are licensed internationally. This lack of transparency means writers are unable to make fully informed decisions about licensing their rights, say the claimants’ attorneys, who accuse the London-based collecting society of “not acting in their [members’] best interests.”
The lawsuit is being led by Pace Rights Management, a direct competitor to PRS for Music, which licenses and administers live performance rights for composers, lyricists, songwriters, publishers and other rights-holders.
Also listed among the 10 claimants are five members of the band Haken; The Jesus and Mary Chain’s founders and core duo, Jim and William Reid; and Fripps’ King Crimson bandmate Michael Jaksyk.
In a joint statement, the ten claimants say that PRS has repeatedly refused to discuss or “constructively engage” with their complaints over a period of several years and accuse the society of straying “significantly from the principles on which it was founded 110 years ago, to the point that the organisation’s policies no longer appear to be operating in the best interests of its members.”
“Regretfully,” the claimants’ statement continues, “we have been left with no option but to seek redress through the courts. The ball is now firmly in PRS’s court. Either they constructively engage with much needed reforms to empower and benefit writers and publishers, or they continue to resist these necessary changes, and attempt to defend the indefensible.”
“I am yet to be persuaded that the PRS operates on behalf of the membership’s best interests,” added Fripp in a statement.
In response, PRS for Music said that it “fundamentally” rejects the allegations and “will be vigorously defending the society against these claims.”
“PRS for Music has consistently sought constructive dialogue with PACE for many years, proposing and implementing solutions to the issues raised,” said the organization in a statement, which accused PACE of itself failing to engage with PRS to find a solution.
“This has resulted in royalties being unnecessarily withheld from PRS members for the live performance of their works at concerts and also created complexity and uncertainty for live music venues and promoters,” the society hit back.
Referring to the terms of its Major Live Concert Service (MLCS), PRS said the initiative was “just one part of a wide range of services” which it provides to members at different stages of their career, including songwriting camps, mentoring schemes and touring and hardship grants for new acts. Last year, the organization paid out £943 million in royalties to its members.
“Given PRS for Music’s sincere efforts to engage constructively, it is disappointing that PACE has taken the step to issue proceedings against us,” said PRS for Music.
On Monday (June 24), the three major music companies filed lawsuits against artificial intelligence (AI) music startups Suno and Udio, alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.” Spearheaded by the RIAA, the two similar lawsuits arrived four days after Billboard first reported that the labels were seriously considering legal action against the two startups.
Filed by plaintiffs Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the lawsuits allege that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
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Hours later, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman responded to the lawsuit with a statement sent to Billboard. “Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music,” he said. “Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists. We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook. Suno is built for new music, new uses, and new musicians. We prize originality.”
An RIAA spokesperson fired back at Shulman’s comment, saying: “Suno continues to dodge the basic question: what sound recordings have they illegally copied? In an apparent attempt to deceive working artists, rightsholders, and the media about its technology, Suno refuses to address the fact that its service has literally been caught on tape — as part of the evidence in this case — doing what Mr. Shulman says his company doesn’t do: memorizing and regurgitating the art made by humans. Winners of the streaming era worked cooperatively with artists and rightsholders to properly license music. The losers did exactly what Suno and Udio are doing now.”
Udio responded on Tuesday (June 25) with a lengthy statement posted to the company’s website. You can read it in full below.
In the past two years, AI has become a powerful tool for creative expression across many media – from text to images to film, and now music. At Udio, our mission is to empower artists of all kinds to create extraordinary music. In our young life as a company, we have sat in the studios of some of the world’s greatest musicians, workshopped lyrics with up-and-coming songwriters, and watched as millions of users created extraordinary new music, ranging from the funny to the profound.
We have heard from a talented musician who, after losing the ability to use his hands, is now making music again. Producers have sampled AI-generated tracks to create hit songs, like ‘BBL Drizzy’, and everyday music-lovers have used the technology to express the gamut of human emotions from love to sorrow to joy. Groundbreaking technologies entail change and uncertainty. Let us offer some insight into how our technology works.
Generative AI models, including our music model, learn from examples. Just as students listen to music and study scores, our model has “listened” to and learned from a large collection of recorded music.
The goal of model training is to develop an understanding of musical ideas — the basic building blocks of musical expression that are owned by no one. Our system is explicitly designed to create music reflecting new musical ideas. We are completely uninterested in reproducing content in our training set, and in fact, have implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices.
We stand behind our technology and believe that generative AI will become a mainstay of modern society.
Virtually every new technological development in music has initially been greeted with apprehension, but has ultimately proven to be a boon for artists, record companies, music publishers, technologists, and the public at large. Synthesizers, drum machines, digital recording technology, and the sound recording itself are all examples of once-controversial music creation tools that were feared in their early days. Yet each of these innovations ultimately expanded music as an art and as a business, leading to entirely new genres of music and billions of dollars in the pockets of artists, songwriters and the record labels and music publishers who profit from their creations.
We know that many musicians — especially the next generation — are eager to use AI in their creative workflows. In the near future, artists will compose music alongside their fans, amateur musicians will create entirely new musical genres, and talented creators — regardless of means — will be able to scale the heights of the music industry.
The future of music will see more creative expression than ever before. Let us use this watershed moment in technology to expand the circle of creators, empower artists, and celebrate human creativity.
Amid an ugly divorce case, Billy Ray Cyrus is now claiming in new court filings that he was abused physically, verbally and emotionally by his soon-to-be-ex-wife Firerose.
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A week after Firerose (Johanna Rose Hodges) accused Cyrus of “psychological abuse” during their short-lived marriage, the singer fired back with his own filing on Monday – not only “vehemently” denying her allegations, but leveling his own claims of abusive behavior against his estranged wife.
“Defendant’s allegations of abuse were only made to sensationalize her false complaints by using the word abuse,” Cyrus’ lawyers write. “While the plaintiff would acknowledge that he was certainly vocal, frustrated and angry with the defendant in May 2024, it is the plaintiff who, in fact, has been abused. Not only verbally and emotionally by the defendant, but PHYSICALLY.”
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Cyrus filed for divorce on May 22, citing “irreconcilable differences” and “inappropriate marital conduct.” The pair, who first started dating in 2022 after years of friendship, were married for only 7 months before the split.
The proceedings have since turned nasty. In a June 13 filing, Cyrus filed an emergency motion accusing Firerose of nearly $100,000 in unauthorized “fraudulent” credit card charges and seeking a temporary restraining order to stop her. Her attorneys later said the accusations were “untrue.”
Then in a June 14 response to the complaint, Firerose claimed that she had been the “victim of extreme verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse. She claimed that Cyrus had been “unpredictable and volatile” due to substance abuse, and had filed for divorce just a day before she had been scheduled to undergo a preventive double mastectomy.
In his response filing on Monday, Cyrus argued that Firerose had scheduled the “elective” surgery as part of an ongoing threat to use the surgery to “ruin his longstanding career in the entertainment industry” if he chose to file for divorce. He claims that she at one point made the threat explicit, allegedly saying: “If you even think about divorcing me right now, I will tell everyone that you did it because of the double mastectomy and your career will be over.”
An attorney for Firerose did not immediately return a request for comment.
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: The world’s biggest music companies file lawsuits against AI music firms accusing them of stealing copyrighted music at “an “unimaginable scale”; a federal judge rules that Megan Thee Stallion didn’t copy her chart-topping “Savage” from an earlier song; the artist formerly known as Kanye West settles a copyright lawsuit filed by Donna Summer’s estate; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Major Labels Sue AI Music Cos. Over Training
In the latest battle between the music industry and artificial intelligence firms, the three major music companies filed lawsuits against AI startups Suno and Udio over allegations that they copyrighted music to train their models on an “unimaginable scale.” Like numerous other copyright cases already filed by book authors, visual artists, newspaper publishers and other creative industries, the new lawsuits ask what could ultimately wind up being a trillion-dollar legal question: Is it copyright infringement to use vast troves of proprietary works to build an AI model that spits out new creations? Or is it just a form of legal fair use, transforming all those old works into something entirely new? The music business already picked that fight once, when major publishers sued AI giant Anthropic last year over its use of written lyrics to train AI models. (That case remains pending). But the new case, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, is the first to deal with sound and music itself, targeting two companies that are offering models that spit out full songs at the push of a button. Suno and Udio have quickly become two of the most important players in the emerging field of AI-generated music. Udio has already produced what could be considered an AI-generated hit song with “BBL Drizzy,” a parody track popularized with a remix by super-producer Metro Boomin and later sampled by Drake himself. And as of May, Suno had raised a total of $125 million in funding to create what Rolling Stone called a “ChatGPT for music.” In the new lawsuit, the record labels alleged that that success had been built on the backs of real human artists: “Since the day it launched, Udio has flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry as part of a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service. Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners.” For more, go read Kristin Robinson’s full story on the new lawsuits, complete with access to the actual complaints filed against Suno and Udio. And stay tuned to Billboard for more updates as the two cases unfold in the federal courts…
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MEGAN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE – A federal judge ruled that Megan Thee Stallion didn’t copy her chart-topping song “Savage” from an earlier song, saying the songs were “qualitatively different” and that there was no evidence the superstar has ever even heard the little-known instrumental track. SUMMER SAMPLE SETTLEMENT – Ye (formerly Kanye West) finalized a settlement with the estate of Donna Summer to resolve a copyright lawsuit that accused him of “shamelessly” using her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” without permission in his song “Good (Don’t Die).” An attorney for the Summer estate confirmed to Billboard that the settlement did not include a license for West to legally re-release the offending track: “We got what we wanted.” YSL TRIAL DRAMA CONTINUES – Yak Gotti, one of Young Thug’s co-defendants in the YSL gang case in Atlanta, asked the Georgia Supreme Court to force Judge Ural Glanville to recuse himself from the ongoing trial, citing recent revelations about a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness. Gotti’s lawyers warned that the judge’s actions “offend public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.” ALBUM HACKING SUIT RESOLVED – Kelsea Ballerini reached a settlement to end her lawsuit against Bo Ewing, a superfan she had accused of hacking her and then leaking her unreleased album. Ballerini agreed to drop the case after Ewing promised to never again share or access the offending materials. MADONNA CASE CLOSED – Two Madonna fans dropped their lawsuit complaining about delayed starts to her concerts, but the star’s lawyers quickly clarified that the move was “not the result of any settlement.” Reiterating earlier claims that the lawsuit had been a “strike suit” aimed at extorting a settlement, Madonna’s attorneys say they might still seek legal sanctions against the lawyers who filed the “frivolous” case. PETTY DOC SPARKS LAWSUIT – A filmmaker named Martyn Atkins filed a lawsuitagainst Warner Music over the 2021 Tom Petty documentary Somewhere You Feel Free, claiming the movie featured 45 minutes of his copyrighted film footage of the late rock legend without permission or payment. Atkins claimed he had been “conned” into sharing the footage with the producers after they promised him the chance to direct the documentary.