Legal News
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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: A deep dive into allegations that NYC radio host DJ Envy was complicit in a multi-million dollar real estate scam; country star Maren Morris files for divorce; an explainer on the battle between Coldplay and its longtime manager; an interview with legendary music lawyer Don Passman; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Top NYC Radio DJ In Hot Water
After news broke last week that DJ Envy, the co-host of the nationally-syndicated hip-hop radio show The Breakfast Club, was accused of taking part in a real estate scam, Billboard dove deep into the complex web of lawsuits, countersuits and bankruptcies that lay out the full picture of the allegations.
In at least 20 civil cases filed in recent months, dozens of investors claim that Cesar Pina and wife Jennifer Pina — New Jersey house-flippers with famous friends — took their money with promises of big profits only to return little or nothing. Lawyers for some of the alleged victims estimate that more than 30 investors have already come forward, seeking over $40 million from the Pinas.
Many of those lawsuits name DJ Envy (RaaShaun Casey) as a co-defendant, citing his close ties to Pina and claiming he used his platform to lend legitimacy to the alleged schemers. One case says Envy “aided and abetted” the fraudsters by “using his public likeness as a well-known radio disc jockey to promote their real estate scheme.”
Envy says those kinds of allegations are not only false — he says he himself is also a victim of Pina’s alleged scheme — but also defamatory. He’s suing the social media influencer who first publicized the claims, claiming he “spewed” lies to promote his own real estate business, and he’s demanding to be dismissed from the investor lawsuits.
Who is Cesar Pina? What are he and Envy accused of doing? What comes next? For the full story, go read our entire deep-dive on the messy scandal.
Other top stories this week…
COLDPLAY LEGAL BATTLE EXPLAINED – With Coldplay involved in a nasty back-and-forth legal battle against former manager Dave Holmes, Billboard’s London correspondent Richard Smirke pored over all the legal docs and broke down everything we’ve learned from the allegations – like the band’s claim that it incurred $21.5 million in touring costs overruns because of Holmes.
LAWMAKERS TARGET AI FAKES – A bipartisan group of U.S. senators released draft legislation aimed at protecting musical artists and others from artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes and other replicas of their likeness, like the infamous “Fake Drake” song released this spring. The so-called NO FAKES Act, which would create a federal right for artists, actors and others to sue those who create “digital replicas” of their image, voice, or visual likeness without permission, is one of the first concrete legislative proposals in the wake of the sudden growth of AI tools over the past year.
DON PASSMAN INTERVIEW – The legendary music lawyer sat down to chat with with Billboard’s Glenn Peoples, talking about the challenges and opportunities posed by AI; about labels “bidding against each other out of FOMO”; about how he thinks artists “now have a lot of power to demand things that they’ve never gotten before in history”; and about his “philosophy” on the catalog sale mania: “For most people, I think it’s a mistake, and I try to talk them out of it.” Go read the full interview here.
MAREN MORRIS DIVORCE – The country star filed for divorce from husband Ryan Hurd after five years of marriage, saying that she and Hurd were “unable to live together successfully as husband and wife” and were “experiencing irreconcilable differences in their marriage.”
SONOS VERDICT OVERTURNED – Five months after Sonos won a whopping $32 million patent infringement judgment against Google over smart speaker technology, a federal judge overturned it on the grounds that the patents involved in the case were invalid. And he didn’t mince words: “This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new. This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first — wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor’s products from an ancient application.”
MOBB DEEP SUED OVER LOGO – Mobb Deep and the streetwear brand Supreme hit were hit with a trademark lawsuit over their recent collaboration on t-shirts, filed by a New York City hardcore punk band (Sick of It All) that claims that the legendary hip hop duo stole their dragon-shaped logo. Apparently, the two musical acts have been quietly battling over their nearly-identical logos for decades.
As the Recording Academy’s chief advocacy & public policy officer, Washington, D.C.-based Todd Dupler oversees the organization’s efforts to champion creators’ rights and advance pro-music legislation from Washington, D.C.
His efforts include the annual District Advocate Day when Recording Academy members come to the nation capital to meet with their local Congressional representatives. On Oct. 5 — less than a week after a government shutdown was narrowly averted — nearly 1,800 Recording Academy members participated in more than 100 meetings with their Congressional representatives via virtual and in person-meetings in D.C. and in their home states. Key among the academy members’ concerns were the evolution of artificial intelligence and protecting the human creator’s rights and ticketing reform. They also advocated for passage of the Restoring Artistic Protections (RAP) Act, which limits the use of songwriters’ lyrics as evidence in criminal and civil proceedings, the Help Independent Tracks Succeed (HITS) Act, which amends the tax code to allow independent artists to fully deduct the cost of new recordings and the American Music Fairness (AMFA) Act, which calls for performers to be compensated when their work is broadcast on AM/FM radio in the U.S.
Dupler, who received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., joined the Recording Academy in 2012 and relaunched the District Advocate program as well as Grammys on the Hill. Under his leadership, Dupler has guided the academy’s efforts to support the passing of legislation including the PEACE Through Music Diplomacy Act, which was signed into law at the end of 2022, as well as the Music Modernization Act and the Better Online Tickets Sales Act. He also launched the Grammy Fund for Music Creators, the academy’s political action committee. His efforts have earned Dupler the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Dupler breaks down how the Recording Academy prepared for District Advocate Day and how he and his team work 365 days a year to fight for creators.
In terms of scope, how did this year compare with past years and how many years has the Recording Academy held District Advocate Day?
We first launched the initiative in 2014 with just a few hundred participants. This year we saw nearly 1,800 academy members participate across 46 states and the District of Columbia. As we prepared for District Advocate Day this year, we faced the threat of a government shutdown and a historic level of instability in Washington. This impacted the number of congressional offices who were able to schedule meetings with us last week — but we didn’t let these challenges stop us from being music advocates. Even with these obstacles, over 1,000 members met with nearly a hundred congressional offices from Orlando to Seattle, New York to Los Angeles, and in dozens of congressional districts in between. Beyond these meetings, hundreds more participated in the academy’s first-ever virtual GRAMMY Advocacy Conference, a reimagined way to use District Advocate as a day for collective action in music.
How do you prepare the 1,800 participating members on the complex issues they are discussing with their representatives?
We provide a variety of resources to members to help prepare them, including a training webinar and talking points about the issues, but the most important thing we emphasize is that our members do not need to be policy experts. Every member comes in with different expertise and passion — one may be particularly familiar with the reforms needed for live event ticketing, while another may be passionate about the Restoring Artistic Protection Act and freedom of creative expression overall. The most important thing that they can do to make an impact is to tell their own story and build a connection with the lawmaker or staff member. The conversations we have on District Advocate Day provide the space for our members to speak to their own experiences, giving a personal voice to these issues.
AI is such a major topic right now. The Recording Academy’s focus is on protecting the human creator. How was that message received from the Congressional members you met with?
Members of Congress are very interested in all aspects of AI, but they haven’t necessarily thought about how AI impacts the creative industries and individual creators. We’ve found that lawmakers are extremely receptive and sympathetic to the unique concerns of music makers and the music community.
During your tenure, what do you consider the biggest victory that has come out of District Advocate Day?
District Advocate has led to a number of notable successes, from building support for the Music Modernization Act to advancing the CASE Act and the PEACE Through Music Diplomacy Act, which were all signed into law. But I’m especially proud that during the first year of the pandemic we were able to adapt and create a virtual program that allowed our members to advocate for much needed relief and support for the music community.
How do you gauge the success of District Advocate Day beyond getting legislation passed?
Promoting our policy priorities is just one aspect of District Advocate Day. The program also provides a unique and powerful way for academy members to actively participate in our advocacy work. Many of our members consider District Advocate Day the most important thing they do as part of the academy.
How does District Advocate Day differ from Grammys on the Hill, which takes place in spring and includes performances and awards, in representing the Recording Academy’s agenda?
Grammys on the Hill is a chance to bring a little bit of the excitement and fun of the Grammy Awards to Washington, D.C., and connect current Grammy winners and nominees with lawmakers. But District Advocate is our opportunity to demonstrate just how broad and diverse the music community really is. We have thousands of academy members across the country in almost every congressional district. Many members of Congress have no idea that there are people making music in their own backyard, so District Advocate is our way to make the issues relevant and relatable to them.
How do you coordinate advocacy across the academy’s 12 chapters and state legislation year-round?
Our chapters are enthusiastic about advocacy both because of the potential for member engagement and because of the positive impact on the community when we are successful. Increasing our state-level advocacy has been an important priority for me. Last year in California, for example, we secured the enactment of the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, which limits the use of song lyrics as evidence in court. That led to the passage of a similar law in Louisiana this year and is fueling ongoing work in New York, Maryland, and even at the national level in Congress. We rely on our members to use their voices and support our state-level advocacy efforts in a number of ways, from writing letters to their congressional representatives, obtaining ballot signatures, and so much more.
In September, the Recording Academy launched the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative, alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Given Hamas’s attack last week on Israel and the ongoing conflict, how does the Initiative plan to direct its efforts to use music as a diplomatic tool in the Middle East?
We know that music not only provides comfort and hope during tragedy, but also builds bridges and promotes understanding between peoples and cultures around the world. Our hope is that through the new mentorship program we are developing with the State Department we will be able to support the growth of music economies in emerging markets around the world like in the Middle East and facilitate new relationships and connections that cross borders. With these goals in mind, the academy will be welcoming international mid-career music professionals to the U.S. through the American Music Mentorship Program starting in fall 2024.
You joined the Recording Academy in 2012. In what ways has its legislative strategy legislation changed over the years and through regime changes?
Throughout my tenure, advocacy has been a constant at the Recording Academy and at the forefront of our mission. Under [CEO] Harvey [Mason jr’s] leadership, I’ve worked to expand and increase that work to better serve our members and the music community. We’ve used the platform provided by the new Songwriters & Composers Wing, for example, to increase our advocacy for songwriters. The new partnership with the State Department has created new opportunities globally. And the expansion of our state advocacy work provides another avenue to assert our leadership on issues that matter to music. Serving music and the people who make it will always be our lodestar.
When music attorney Don Passman was starting his career five decades ago, he talked his first client out of signing a 15-year contract that would have paid her manager half her earnings. Today, that same artist could get the same career-saving advice from Passman’s revered guide, All You Need to Know About the Music Business, for just $35 retail.
A partner at Los Angeles-based Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc., Passman is hesitant to discuss his high-wattage clients — he is said to represent Taylor Swift and Adele, among others — but is always eager to share the lessons he has learned from five decades of representing them. The 11th edition of All You Need to Know About the Music Business, to be released by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 24, arrives at a critical time for many musicians. Increasingly, artists are deciding to remain independent and use the high-powered tools at their disposal — everything from recording applications to digital distribution to social media apps like TikTok — to build a fan base. Both opportunity and the ability to make poor decisions have never been greater.
To Passman — who doesn’t take major record labels as clients, although his firm “occasionally” represents an independent label, he says — the proliferation of do-it-yourself marketing tools has brought equity to a business long marred by power imbalances. Unlike the early years in Passman’s career, when record labels, retailers and radio stations acted as powerful gatekeepers, today’s artists go directly to fans using digital distributors and powerful tools such as TikTok and YouTube. With such low barriers to entry, more than 100,000 tracks are uploaded to digital service providers every day. Being a professional musician is easy. Being a successful professional musician is far more difficult.
“Now the game has become [about] how do you break through the noise?” says Passman in a recent Zoom call. “The record labels have made a conscious decision to wait and see what artists can get traction on their own. And then when they get enough heat, the record company starts to chase them.”
As the tools of the trade have changed, so too has the path to success. With the exception of K-pop labels, companies rarely pluck unknown artists from obscurity and spend years developing their careers. Artists are expected to build their own careers and develop enough momentum to warrant a record label’s commitment. That often requires building a team — manager, agent, attorney and an army of consultants — and taking more of a CEO role. For a generation of aspiring artists, Passman’s advice has never been more important.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
In the new version of All You Need to Know About the Music Business, you write that the music business has become far more democratic since the last edition of your book. What do you mean by that?
Now it’s about how you connect with your fans. I have a section that I’ve expanded this time about how to go about doing that. Whether you want to do it yourself completely, or whether you want to go to a label, you’ve got to start a buzz on your own and you’ve got to make things happen. The companies get the same data, they’re all chasing the same artists and you’re getting bidding wars. And artists are able to get deals that in history they could have never gotten for their first record deal.
The downside is that you get people who have a billion streams but have never played in front of a live audience. I’m exaggerating, but they don’t have years on the road of developing their chops and don’t have a show. Maybe they’ve only got a few songs. If you look at the statistics from Billboard, there are less new artists in the top 100 over the last few years. It’s been declining. And there’s a concern that we’re in we’re in the hip-building business rather than the career-building business and no one’s quite sure why or what to do about it other than feed the short attention span and the virality of some of these things. But it’s challenging in that sense to build a long-term career.
From where you sit as an attorney, are things working out for these artists that have some do-it-yourself success and then get signed? How’s that next step going for them?
The reality is I don’t do a lot of those kinds of deals, just because we’re a small firm and I don’t take a lot of business. And so, I don’t take as many shots with brand new artists. I do here and there, but not a lot.
It also depends on the smartness of your manager and the innate talent of the artists to follow it up. But the ones that are real artists, and the ones that are well managed, can launch a good career off of it. The ones that are one-shot wonders don’t do so well. They can’t follow it up. I don’t know what the statistics are on the ones that get these massive deals, but I’m going to guess there’s a pretty good rate of failure beyond the first record.
But the companies have gotten more sophisticated. They’re not just looking for something that’s got hundreds of millions of streams. They’re also looking for fan engagement. They’re looking to see whether there’s a real connection with the artists because today it’s all about connecting with fans. And the artists that do that well and maintain it and build their connections and their image and their buzz, are going to have much healthier careers than the ones who just happen to catch a moment.
The front of the new edition of your book says artists have more power than ever in the history of the business. Where’s that power coming from?
From what we’ve discussed about how the labels are chasing people who already have a buzz. What happens is that two or three labels start to chase the same artist and if the artist is trending upward during the fox hunt, the numbers get bigger and bigger, and the labels are bidding against each other out of FOMO. And so, the artists now have a lot of power to demand things that they’ve never gotten before in history, like a share of the profits, like ownership of their masters that revert after a period of time. It used to be that you had had to be massive to get those things, but not anymore.
What about artists who are already established? Do they have more power? Is there a ceiling to how powerful a Taylor Swift or somebody can be in her negotiations?
Well, there’s a ceiling. But the ceiling in any negotiation is just simply the pain tolerance of the other side. My personal philosophy is that you there’s such a thing as making too good a deal — if you leave the other side so battered that they have no incentive to do anything, in particular with the artist if something goes wrong, because they just can’t make enough of a return on it. I think there’s such a thing as going over the line. Now, I’m happy to go up to the line and maybe an inch or two over. In fact, I’m probably not doing my job if I don’t. But when you get to the massive superstars, you get to figure out where the lines are, and you get to do something that’s never been done before. And that, to me, is the most fun part of the business.
The 360-degree multi-rights contract was dominant for a time. Artists pushed back. They didn’t want to share other revenue streams other than recorded music. And is that still a starting point for contracts is the 360 and then you carve out exceptions?
Yes, and yes. Most of all, labels will ask for something. If there’s any kind of bidding war, it goes away pretty quickly. A few labels are stubborn and think they’re entitled to it no matter what. But most labels, if there’s any kind of bidding, it’ll go away. Or at worst, it gets reduced radically to relatively small amounts.
So that’s a sign of artists having more power is getting better terms in these recording contracts.
Correct.
What things still exist in recording contracts that have had a bad reputation? I’m thinking of reserves for returns or control composition clauses or ways that labels would keep a little money for themselves at the expense of artists. Do these things still exist?
They do but they’re becoming much less relevant. Certainly, the returns reserve if the item is physical goods still applies. Although vinyl is surging, it’s still less than 10% of the business. So, it applies to that. And the same thing with the control composition clause. It doesn’t really apply to digital. It only applies to physical product in any relatively recent deals. And so, it’s become less relevant and easier for the artists to get better terms on it.
What would you like to completely rid from contracts?
The contracts have gotten reasonably artist-friendly over time. I mean, obviously, they’re still going to want to take an edge and a corner. I will tell you that re-recording restrictions have gotten tougher in recent years for reasons you can probably figure out. And those used to be much broader than they are now.
What’s a typical restriction?
They don’t want you to duplicate your recordings — like ever — and then they will limit the other types of recordings you can do. So, it’s gotten tougher as the labels get more concerned about artists re-recording or catalogs.
There’s a lot of concern about artificial intelligence these days — about properly harnessing the technology, concerns about getting paid, concerns about unauthorized use of artists, voice or songwriters’ compositions from a legal perspective. How challenging is this new generation of AI technologies?
We’re not going to put AI back in the bottle. It’s here. The real problem with AI, apart from the fact that artists may not like it, is that it can dilute the money that’s paid out to real artists. If I got 1,000 plays, and there’s 10,000 in a month, I’m gonna get 10% of the money, right? The problem is that if part of those plays are AI, and the streamer isn’t paying anybody, because there’s no copyright in AI, and there’s no ability to get paid for it, then they’re taking a chunk of money that’s not going out to the real artists. So, the challenge is to make sure that they can’t use AI to dilute what’s going to the record companies and artists. And obviously, the companies are all over this and I think will be successful if they aren’t already — it’s not public — in making sure that doesn’t happen. But that’s a major concern coming out of AI that we need to be careful about.
But there’s also potential, too. I can imagine estates using AI to bring to life deceased artists.
Yes, of course, all of those things are possible. Interestingly, there’s no copyright in AI. So, if you use it to create something, it may be that anything you create, anybody else can use for free, and you can’t necessarily get paid for it. So, I do think AI has a place in helping artists and helping enhance materials and so forth, but the law gets a little tricky because you can only get a copyright on what’s created by a human is pretty well settled. And so, the part created by the AI doesn’t have a copyright, so you don’t end up owning 100% of your material.
If something is created with AI, would part of that be copyrighted and then some portion would not, based on whatever the AI created?
Yes, that’s correct.
And then how is the split determined?
It depends on how much creativity the human put into it. If I go to an AI machine, and I say, “Write spa music,” and it knocks out a bunch of spa-sounding music, I haven’t done anything creative. I’ve just said, “Go make spa music”. If, on the other hand, I say, “Draw a picture of Kim Jong Un and Abraham Lincoln in a wrestling match on a roof in Mumbai,” maybe I’ve got enough creativity to get something of the copyright — but not in the drawing.
There’s a recent case with the Copyright Office about Zarya of the Dawn, where the author wrote a story and then had AI create the pictures for a graphic novel. The copyright office said there’s no copyright in the individual images. There is [copyright] on the story. But there’s interestingly what’s called a compilation copyright in the novel, meaning the way you arrange the pictures. The law in copyright says if I arrange un-copyrighted material in a particular way, I can get a copyright in the arrangement even though the underlying materials aren’t copyrighted, like a phone book, for example, the names aren’t copyrightable, but you can get a copyright in the way they’re arranged in the phonebook. And so that same principle applies here when you’ve got a number of copyrightable drawings in a particular way. But anybody could copy one of the drawings separately.
In your book, you give artists some advice: “All the superstars I’ve known have a clear vision of who they are and what their music is.” But there are also countless stories of artists, perhaps with clear visions, running into record labels’ A&R teams and sometimes that vision changes. What separates the superstar artists that you’ve known from the artists that didn’t reach that status?
I think the simple answer is their drive and their passion. The superstars have an unlimited amount of drive and are willing to walk through walls and they don’t get discouraged, and they keep getting up when they get knocked down and they just keep going. I think that’s what separates them. I think it could arguably be more important than talent. I mean, you and I could both name some moderately talented superstars just as we can name amazingly talented people who’ve never had much of a career. And the difference, I think, is their drive and their ability to want to do the work. It’s just a lot of work to have to have a serious career in any field really, but particularly in entertainment when you there’s no set path to get on. You just have to do it yourself.
Are the superstars equally demanding of their attorneys? Do they have high expectations for you as well?
I hope so. You know, it depends on the artist, and it depends on the situation. A lot of them are not that interested in business, or they may be interested but they want to spend their time being creative, which is a smart decision. So, they have people around them. But I think they deserve the utmost time and attention.
Your book details quite well how the music business can get really complicated and have a lot of pitfalls. What are some mistakes you see artists and their attorneys still making that they shouldn’t?
Well, in the early stages, the biggest mistakes artists make are signing long-term deals and not having any kind of an out if things aren’t working and they can get hung up with a manager that can really impact your career. They can get hung up on a record deal that’s not very good or a publishing deal that’s not very good, and no ability to ever get out of it. I think those are the things to watch for in the beginning.
That recalls your first client. I believe a manager was trying to get 50% out of your first entertainment client?
Yeah, for 15 years.
So, there would have been an out at some point, but 15 years is a long time.
Yeah, it was a completely stupid deal, but I was so young I was scared to death. But I did talk her out of it.
Artists and songwriters can sell their catalogs for pretty large sums these days. It seems to me that those deals haven’t changed the balance of power much because they go to artists who are already the most successful. Would you agree or disagree with that?
Catalog sales are happening at every level; the ones who get the headlines are the most successful. At almost every level somebody is selling their catalogs. I’ll give you my philosophy on it: For most people, I think it’s a mistake, and I try to talk them out of it. And I can give you the reasons if you’re interested. There’s a section in the book on this as well.
Yes, please do.
Historically, everybody who sold their catalog has regretted it. The Beatles catalog sold a Michael Jackson for $47 million; it’s probably worth $1 billion today. There’s people over the years who have sold their royalty stream and with the changes in technology, they now make almost as much every year it would have made them as what they sold it for, or at least two or three years’ worth. And the other exercise is a pretty simple one: Take the money that you get from the sale, deduct your expenses of selling, pay your taxes, and when you look at what’s leftover can you invest it and get the same amount of money you were getting before? And do you have the same upside potential your catalogue has? A lot of time the answer is no. And prices are definitely at a historic high. I’ve never seen them this high.
On the other hand, these are pretty smart financial people on the other side, and they’re betting that the market is going to grow and subscription prices will go up and there’ll be more people subscribing as an industry matures, and they think that the income is going to go up.
So, now having said all that, I do think it makes sense in the following circumstance: If you’re an older artist, if your heirs don’t know how to handle your catalog, or will kill each other trying to handle it, it could make sense to sell it. It could also make sense if you don’t have enough cash to pay estate tax on the value of your catalog when it comes around, and they have to do a fire sale, and you’re worried about that for your heirs. Or if you desperately need money at any level. I think it should be one of the last assets to go. It’s a place to get money, but you could also borrow against it to some degree depending on what you’re looking to do. I’ve obviously done a number of these because not everybody agrees with me and a lot of them are in the circumstances I’ve described. But for the most part, and certainly for younger artists, I think it’s something to be very careful about
How often are you able to dissuade people of selling? Do you make a convincing argument?
I have a pretty good track record of it, yeah. By the way, it’s not in my personal interest. I’d love to get it large fee for selling a catalog, but I always try and do what’s best for the artists.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators released draft legislation Thursday (Oct. 12) aimed at protecting musical artists and others from artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes and other replicas of their likeness, like this year’s infamous “Fake Drake” song.
The draft bill – labelled the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act, or NO FAKES Act — would create a federal right for artists, actors and others to sue those who create “digital replicas” of their image, voice, or visual likeness without permission.
In announcing the bill, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) specifically cited the April release of “Heart On My Sleeve,” an unauthorized song that featured AI-generated fake vocals from Drake and The Weeknd.
“Generative AI has opened doors to exciting new artistic possibilities, but it also presents unique challenges that make it easier than ever to use someone’s voice, image, or likeness without their consent,” Coons said in a statement. “Creators around the nation are calling on Congress to lay out clear policies regulating the use and impact of generative AI.”
The draft bill quickly drew applause from music industry groups. The RIAA said it would push for a final version that “effectively protects against this illegal and immoral misappropriation of fundamental rights that protect human achievement.”
“Our industry has long embraced technology and innovation, including AI, but many of the recent generative AI models infringe on rights — essentially instruments of theft rather than constructive tools aiding human creativity,” the group wrote in the statement.
The American Association of Independent Music offered similar praise: “Independent record labels and the artists they work with are excited about the promise of AI to transform how music is made and how consumers enjoy art, but there must be guardrails to ensure that artists can make a living and that labels can recoup their investments.” The group said it would push to make sure that the final bill’s provisions were “accessible to small labels and working-class musicians, not just the megastars.”
A person’s name and likeness — including their distinctive voice — are already protected in most states by the so-called right of publicity, which allows control how your individual identity is commercially exploited by others. But those rights are currently governed by a patchwork of state statutes and common law systems.
The NO FAKES Act would create a nationwide property right in your image, voice, or visual likeness, allowing an individual to sue anyone the produced a “newly-created, computer-generated, electronic representation” of it. Unlike many state-law systems, that right would not expire at death and could be controlled by a person’s heirs for 70 years after their passing.
A tricky balancing act for any publicity rights legislation is the First Amendment and its protections for free speech. In Thursday’s announcementthe NO FAKES Act’s authors said the bill would include specific carveouts for replicas used in news coverage, parody, historical works or criticism.
“Congress must strike the right balance to defend individual rights, abide by the First Amendment, and foster AI innovation and creativity,” Coons said.
The draft was co-authored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
Five months after an Instagram account first accused New York City radio host DJ Envy of being complicit in a multi-million dollar real estate investment scam in New Jersey, the situation has turned into a sprawling web of lawsuits, countersuits, bankruptcies and media coverage.
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In at least 20 civil cases filed in recent months, dozens of investors claim that Cesar Pina and wife Jennifer Pina, New Jersey developers with famous friends, ripped them off — either through failed house flipping, a stalled apartment development project, or a startup they said would empower small investments in real estate.
Many of those lawsuits, including one filed by music industry veteran Anthony Martini, name DJ Envy (RaaShaun Casey) as a co-defendant, citing close ties to Pina. They claim Envy helped to promote the alleged schemers, including through appearances on The Breakfast Club, his nationally-syndicated hip hop radio show. One case says Envy “aided and abetted” the fraudsters by “using his public likeness as a well-known radio disc jockey to promote their real estate scheme.”
Firing back, Envy says those kinds of allegations are not only false — he says he himself is also a victim of Pina’s alleged scheme — but also defamatory. He’s suing the social media influencer who first publicized the allegations, claiming he “spewed” lies to promote his own real estate business, and he’s demanding to be dismissed from the investor lawsuits.
“They’re sensationalizing this situation,” said Envy’s lawyer, Massimo F. D’Angelo of the law firm Blank Rome, in a phone interview with Billboard. “Envy had no involvement whatsoever. The only reason he’s being dragged into this is because he’s a public figure.”
How did we get here? What exactly are the accusations? And what comes next? Here’s everything you need to know about the growing scandal.
Who is Cesar Pina?
Pina has long pitched himself a real estate guru, frequently posting about his work to a star-studded Instagram page featuring shots of Pina with Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Post Malone and Meek Mill. On his website, he says he’s been rehabbing and flipping homes in the Garden State for over a decade; he claims to own 1,100 rental properties in Paterson, N.J., alone.
One of the celebs frequently pictured with Pina was DJ Envy, who for more than a decade has co-hosted The Breakfast Club, a popular hip hop-focused radio talk show on New York’s Power 105.1. And the two had a close public relationship beyond social media: Over the years, Pina has repeatedly appeared on the show as a guest, and he and Envy co-hosted a series of seminars on real estate investing from 2018 onward.
As recently as June 2022, Pina made an appearance on The Breakfast Club to plug an investment platform he was launching called Flip 2 Dao, which would allow users to make small, fractional investments in real estate projects. Throughout the interview, Envy repeatedly touted his relationship with the developer and the value of the new investment tool.
“People always ask, how can I invest with you guys? And we never take anybody’s money,” Envy told listeners. “Now there will be a way where people can actually invest to be a part owner on some of the projects that we actually buy.”
What are the accusations?
Back in May, an Instagram account called TonyTheCloser (real name Tony Robinson) began making serious allegations of wrongdoing against Pina. In a series of videos and live streams, Robinson claimed that Pina had used his celebrity status to defraud numerous people, taking their money to invest in flipping properties with the promise of big profits, but ultimately returning little or nothing.
He also claimed that Envy had played a key role in the fraud by promoting Pina to his listeners. At various times, Robinson called the radio host a “thief,” “criminal,” and “scammer,” claiming he had “stolen millions” from investors and aided a “Ponzi scheme” — an infamous form of fraud in which the perpetrator creates the façade of a real business by paying earlier victims with funds from later victims.
Those social media allegations quickly turned into a wave of civil lawsuits filed in New Jersey state courts.
In a May complaint, a company called Amy Flips claimed it had provided Pena with $500,000 to invest in properties and lost all but $30,000. A month later, attorneys for a New York man named Trevor Roman alleged he was owed $280,000 by Pina and his companies, saying their client was “one of many who fell prey to these fraudulent and deceptive tactics.” In July, a New Jersey man named Paul Peralta claimed that he had given Pina $600,000 in four payments as part of a “Ponzi scheme and investment scam” — and he specifically claimed the scheme had been promoted by “a radio show called The Breakfast Club.”
Martini, the music executive, also filed his case in July. Joined by another spurned investor named Anthony Barone, their lawyers claimed they had lost $1.5 million after Pina duped them into investing in a massive, 50-unit apartment project in Paterson that was never completed, as well as another $300,000 that they invested in the Flip 2 Dao platform.
But they also went a step further, naming DJ Envy as an actual defendant in the lawsuit. They claimed the DJ had not only plugged Pina on the air, but that he had personally attended a pitch meeting with Barone, and that he had joined Pina in leading a guided tour for big-wig investors around his New Jersey properties. Martini and Barone’s lawyers also specifically cited Pina’s June 2022 appearance on The Breakfast Club, in which he plugged Flip 2 Dao.
“But for Casey’s role in lending legitimacy to the real estate investments and portraying himself as a partner to the Pinas, plaintiffs would not have invested their money,” wrote Sean Mack, an attorney at the law firm Pashman Stein Walder Hayden and lead counsel for Martini and Barone.
All told, Pina is currently facing 20 lawsuits, almost half of which have been filed just since the beginning of August; Envy is named as a defendant in nine of those cases. It’s unclear exactly how much money Pina is alleged to owe his investors, but in an August filing, Martini’s lawyers claimed that more than 30 victims had come forward seeking over $40 million.
Pina’s lawyer, Steven Griegel of the firm Roselli Griegel Lozier & Lazzaro, did not return a request for comment from Billboard. But in at least one case against his client, he has argued that Pina’s investor did get their initial investment back — and that by demanding the huge profits they say they were promised, they are actually the ones violating New Jersey law.
“The plaintiff in this case is boldly seeking the court’s assistance to recover [triple] damages and attorneys’ fees for loansharking, even after it has been paid amounts in excess of New Jersey’s criminal usurious laws,” Griegel wrote in one case. “Obviously, the court should not be a part of validating this.”
Despite TonyTheCloser’s claims, there have been no allegations of criminal wrongdoing against either Pina or Envy.
What has DJ Envy said?
Since immediately after the allegations first cropped up in May, DJ Envy has denied that he did anything wrong, including during an interview with TonyTheCloser on an Instagram livestream. He says that he was not directly involved with any of Pina’s deals mentioned in the lawsuits, that he never solicited money from anyone during their seminars, and that he was not aware of any fraudulent activity.
But that hasn’t quieted the growing scandal. On Tuesday, New York’s local NBC affiliate ran an investigative piece under the headline “Real estate rip-off? Radio DJ promoted alleged NJ scheme leaving investors out of millions.” The story included interviews with numerous alleged victims, including a couple who say they invested with Pina “after seeing him on social media with DJ Envy.”
“He’s advertising this all over radio and television, so I thought this was legit,” the victim said in the NBC report. “We invested $200,000 and it looks like we won’t ever get it back.”
On Wednesday, Envy directly addressed the allegations on The Breakfast Club: “Cesar, if he took money, I wasn’t privy to it, nor did I even know. But I do understand how people feel if they did give him money, because I gave him a lot of money [and] I didn’t see a dollar of return. But for anybody to say that I was involved, that’s totally not true.”
In legal filings, Envy’s lawyers have made similar arguments. They say the DJ was also “lured” to invest $500,000 in separate project, meaning he “may be a victim of the Pina’s alleged fraudulent conduct” just like the plaintiffs. And they say that he was not involved in any Pina’s deals with spurned investors, nor made any direct “representations” to anyone regarding those transactions.
“Plaintiffs’ real targets are clearly the Pinas given Mr. Casey’s lack of involvement,” wrote D’Angelo, in a filing on Friday aimed at getting Envy dismissed from Martini’s case. “In an attempt to sensationalize this case, however, plaintiffs included Mr. Casey … as a defendant in this case. Plaintiffs’ conduct is wrongful and has caused, and continues to cause, significant damage to Mr. Casey’s reputation and businesses.”
But what about the fact that Envy repeatedly made public appearances with Pina and invited him onto The Breakfast Club? That’s been a common refrain from victims and other critics, who say the DJ used his sizable public platform to lend legitimacy to a scammer.
Legally speaking, Envy’s lawyers say that behavior simply does not rise to the level of active endorsement or direct involvement that would put their client on the hook for Pina’s alleged scheme. They say the DJ and his show were “used” by Pina, just like other media outlets and celebrities.
“Plaintiffs cannot plausibly or convincingly allege that Mr. Casey’s radio and social media interviews were the sole and principle reason for their investments, rather than the specific misrepresentations made by the Pinas directly to the plaintiffs,” D’Angelo wrote in that same court filing. “Mr. Casey has interviewed thousands of guests on The Breakfast Club, including celebrities and entrepreneurs, who have discussed various topics including their life experiences and businesses.”
DJ Envy has also quietly moved from defense to offense. In a federal lawsuit filed in August, he sued TonyTheCloser for defamation, interference with his business, and invasion of privacy. He claims that Robinson’s allegations against him are false — and that they’re part of money-making scheme to drive attention toward his own real estate business.
“Defendant, knowingly and intentionally, spewed false slanderous and defamatory misinformation about the plaintiff, which has, and continues to severely damage plaintiff,” wrote D’Angelo, who is also repping Envy in that case. “Defendant engaged in this wrongful conduct for the purposes of increasing traffic on his social media sites for his own personal gain in the form of paid advertisements.”
Robinson did not return a request for comment on the allegations.
What comes next?
Two of Pina’s companies, Whairhouse Real Estate Investments LLC and Taylor Court Apartments LLC (the company that administered the 50-unit apartment project in Paterson), have filed for federal bankruptcy since start of August. His wife Jennifer, who is named in many of the civil lawsuits, has repeatedly attempted to file for personal bankruptcy, but has been rejected for procedural defects. Pina himself does not yet appear to have sought bankruptcy protection.
Fearing that they’ll never have a chance to recover their money, some of Pina’s aggrieved investors have already jumped into those bankruptcy cases, demanding that the court appoint a trustee — an independent attorney chosen by the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee the case and make sure that any remaining money is fairly allocated to creditors. And those arguments worked: Last week, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Rosemary Gambardella ruled in both bankruptcy cases that a Chapter 11 trustee was needed to sort out the messy web of alleged debts and wrongdoing.
That ruling came after attorneys for Pina’s creditors argued that a single combined bankruptcy case, administered by one trustee, would be better than dozens of separate lawsuits at “unraveling of this wide-ranging fraud and the marshalling of assets to satisfy the scores of victims.”
“This will soon become the proverbial race to the courthouse to seize whatever assets remain of the Pinas and their entities,” wrote attorney Mack, the lawyer who represents Barone and Martini in their case against Pina and Envy. “A trustee is needed in this case, and in the cases of the related debtor parties, to organize and efficiently marshal and distribute the remaining assets to the Pinas’ many victims.”
A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday in a case filed by TikTok and five Montana content creators who want the court to block the state’s ban on the video sharing app before it takes effect Jan. 1.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula is not expected to rule immediately on the request for a preliminary injunction.
Montana became the first state in the U.S. to pass a complete ban on the app, based on the argument that the Chinese government could gain access to user information from TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing.
Content creators say the ban violates free speech rights and could cause economic harm for their businesses.
TikTok said in court filings that the state passed its law based on “unsubstantiated allegations,” that Montana cannot regulate foreign commerce and that the state could have passed a law requiring TikTok limit the kinds of data it could collect, or require parental controls, rather than trying to enact a complete ban.
Western governments have expressed worries that the popular social media platform could put sensitive data in the hands of the Chinese government or be used as a tool to spread misinformation. Chinese law allows the government to order companies to help it gather intelligence.
TikTok, which is negotiating with the federal government over its future in the U.S., has denied those allegations. But that hasn’t made the issue go away.
In a first-of-its kind report on Chinese disinformation released last month, the U.S. State Department alleged that ByteDance seeks to block potential critics of Beijing, including those outside of China, from using its platforms.
The report said the U.S. government had information as of late 2020 that ByteDance “maintained a regularly updated internal list” identifying people who were blocked or restricted from its platforms — including TikTok — “for reasons such as advocating for Uyghur independence.”
More than half of U.S. states and the federal government have banned TikTok on official devices. The company has called the bans “political theatre” and says further restrictions are unnecessary due to the efforts it is taking to protect U.S. data by storing it on Oracle servers.
The bill was brought to the Montana Legislature after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the state.It would prohibit downloads of TikTok in the state and fine any “entity” — an app store or TikTok — $10,000 per day for each time someone “is offered the ability” to access or download the app. There would not be penalties for users.
The American Civil Liberties Union, its Montana chapter and Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group, have submitted an amicus brief in support of the challenge. Meanwhile, 18 attorneys generals from mostly Republican-led states are backing Montana and asking the judge to let the law be implemented. Even if that happens, cybersecurity experts have said it could be challenging to enforce.
In asking for the preliminary injunction, TikTok argued that the app has been in use since 2017 and letting Montanans continue to use it will not harm the state.
Montana did not identify any evidence of actual harm to any resident as a result of using TikTok and even delayed the ban’s effective date until Jan. 1, 2024, the company said.
The escalating legal battle between Coldplay and its former manager Dave Holmes significantly stepped up this month when the band filed a counterclaim lawsuit in the U.K. courts seeking £14 million ($17 million) in damages.
The court filing comes two months after Holmes announced he was suing the four members of Coldplay — Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion and Chris Martin — for more than £10 million ($12 million) in damages and unpaid commission relating to the band’s yet-to-be-released 10th and 11th studio albums.
Having examined legal papers filed in the U.K. courts on behalf of both parties, here’s Billboard’s rundown of everything we know so far about the acrimonious dispute between Holmes and his former star clients.
Why Holmes and Coldplay fell out after more than 20 years of success together
Although the precise cause of the fallout between Holmes and Coldplay is not detailed in either lawsuit, legal papers filed by the group’s attorneys on Oct. 5 state that the band made the decision to dismiss the manager last summer following “a period of increasing concern” about his conduct. (Holmes’ position as the group’s manager officially came to an end Dec. 31, 2022).
In particular, the four band members allege that Holmes breached his contractual obligations by “failing” to adequately manage costs for the group’s 2022-2023 Music of the Spheres World Tour leading them to suffer “significant financial losses.”
“Unjustified” touring costs
Examples of financial mismanagement cited in the countersuit include spending 10.5 million euros ($11 million) on the construction of 16 bespoke stage pylons and commissioning the manufacture of a bespoke audio-visual “Jet Screen” at a total cost of $9.7 million that was only used for 10 shows in 2022. Another third-party supplier, listed in legal papers as TAIT, was paid $8.8 million to construct staging for the tour.
Coldplay’s attorneys say that those costs were “disproportionate and unjustified” and, as a result of Holmes’ “failing adequately to supervise and control” the tour budget, the band incurred at least £17.5 million ($21.5 million) in costs “which would otherwise have been avoided.”
That version of events is disputed by sources close to Holmes who deny that the former manager was responsible for tour costs overrunning. Instead, people familiar with the situation tell Billboard that many production decisions relating to the Music of the Spheres were made under the guidance of the band’s long-term creative director Phil Harvey, who has co-managed the band since last summer (following Holmes’ exit) alongside Mandi Frost and Arlene Moon.
Live Nation loans
Coldplay’s lawsuit claims that Holmes breached his fiduciary duties by using his association with the act to borrow a total of $30 million in low interest loans from Live Nation to fund a personal property development venture in Canada. The loans were not fully disclosed to the group and, as such, were secured without its informed consent, claim the four members.
Coldplay’s attorneys argue that these loans – set at a fixed annual interest rate of 2.72% – placed Holmes in a potential conflict of interest when it came to securing the best possible deal for his clients from Live Nation.
At the time when Holmes was negotiating a deal with Live Nation in 2021 and 2022 to exclusively promote Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour outside of the United Kingdom, the manager owed the touring giant approximately $27 million, the court filing alleges.
In response, the band is asking the courts to grant it access to Holmes’ financial accounts detailing any profits resulting from the low interest loans and the payment of any monies due to them.
The so-called “Albums 10/11 Agreement”
Holmes’ lawsuit against his former clients’ centers around a proposed contract extension (the so-called “Albums 10/11 Agreement”) that he claims Coldplay entered into in 2021 with his California-based management company, DHMC, relating to its yet-to-be-released tenth and eleventh studio albums.
Attorneys for Holmes claim he is owed outstanding commission from record company advances the manager negotiated on the band’s behalf with its label, Warner Music Group-owned Parlophone Records. Those advances totaled £35 million ($44 million) for Coldplay’s 10th album and £15 million ($19 million) each for the group’s subsequent two studio albums.
In return, Holmes received two payments in 2021 of £1.5 ($1.9 million), each equivalent to a 10% commission fee, state the court documents. However, his attorneys claim he is still due outstanding payment from the remainder of the record company advances paid to Coldplay.
Clearing samples, arranging recording sessions and recruiting Max Martin as producer
Holmes’ lawsuit additionally claims he is due payment for “extensive services” his company carried out for the 10th and 11th albums (and related tours) prior to his termination as manager.
These services include arranging writing and recording sessions in Jamaica and London, clearing an instrumental sample from musician Hal Walker, arranging a recording session on a film set in Boston, and liaising with producer Max Martin’s manager to arrange recording and production sessions.
Holmes says his team also worked on planning promotional campaigns, as well as scheduling, marketing, budgeting, sponsorship and ticket pricing for the United States, Asia and Australia legs of the Music of the Spheres World Tour.
Attorneys for Coldplay’s four founding members dispute their former manager’s claim and say that negotiations between the two parties broke down before “any such agreement might have been signed.”
In its defense and counterclaim filing, the band is seeking repayment of £3 million ($3.7 million) paid to DHMC in 2021 as advances for the band’s 10th album.
What Holmes and Coldplay are saying outside of court
On Coldplay’s part, very little. When Holmes’ lawsuit was filed in August a representative for the band confirmed with Billboard that Holmes’ management contract with the four-piece expired at the end of 2022 “at which point they decided not to start a new one. The matter is now in the hands of Coldplay’s lawyers and the claims are being vigorously disputed.” Representatives of the group declined to comment when contacted by Billboard this week about Coldplay counterclaim lawsuit.
Responding to Coldplay’s legal action, which is dated Oct. 5, a spokesperson for their former manager said, “Accusing Dave Holmes of non-existent ethical lapses and other made-up misconduct will not deflect from the real issue at hand: Coldplay had a contract with Dave, they are refusing to honor it and they need to pay Dave what they owe him.”
The matter will now proceed through the U.K. courts unless a settlement can be reached.
A judge has overturned a $32.5 million judgment against Google in the tech giant’s long-running case against Sonos over smart speaker patents.
In an Oct. 6 decision, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that the jury verdict from May that found Google had infringed one of Sonos’ smart speaker patents was invalid because the patents at issue in the case were “unenforceable.”
In a nutshell, Alsup claims that Sonos improperly linked its 2019 patent application, which was ultimately approved, with an earlier, rejected 2006 application for the same patents in an effort to show that its patents pre-dated Google’s products incorporating similar multi-room audio technology. The judge alleges the link is invalid because Sonos “deceptively” inserted new material into the 2019 application without alerting the patent examiner of the changes. He notes that when a continuation application for a patent — as was the case with the 2019 application, which was filed as a “continuation” of the one filed in 2006 — includes material not included in the original application, the two cannot rightly be connected.
“When new matter is added to a specification of a continuation application by way of amendment, the effective filing date should be the date of the amendment that added the new matter,” Alsup wrote. This effectively means that Sonos’ “priority date” for the patent would be Aug. 2019, when the amended application was approved — not 2006.
Alsup additionally accuses Sonos of “an unreasonable, inexcusable, and prejudicial delay” in filing suit against Google. He states that in 2014, five years prior to Sonos’ 2019 patent application, Google had shared with Sonos “a plan for a product that would practice what would become [Sonos’] claimed invention” as part of an exploration of a potential collaboration. When that partnership failed to come to fruition, Alsup adds, Google began rolling out its own products that utilized the invention in 2015.
“Even so, Sonos waited until 2019 to pursue claims on the invention (and until 2020 to roll out the invention in its own product line),” he writes.
“This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new,” Alsup continues. “This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first — wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor’s products from an ancient application.”
“Judge Alsup’s ruling invalidating the jury’s verdict is wrong on both the facts and law, and Sonos will appeal,” a Sonos spokesperson told Billboard in a statement. “The same is true of earlier rulings narrowing our case. While an unfortunate result, it does not change the fact that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, as the International Trade Commission has already ruled with respect to five other patents. In the end, we expect this to be a temporary setback in our efforts to hold Google financially accountable for misappropriating Sonos’s patented inventions.”
Google did not respond to a request for comment at publishing time.
Sonos first sued Google in January 2020, claiming the tech giant had infringed multiple patents for its smart speaker technology after gaining access to it through a 2013 partnership under which Sonos integrated Google Play Music into its products. Just two years after that partnership was reached, Sonos alleged that Google then “flooded the market” with cheaper competing products (under the now-defunct Chromecast Audio line) that willfully infringed its patented multi-room technology. Sonos additionally claimed that Google had since expanded its use of Sonos technology in more than a dozen other products, including the Google Home, Nest and Pixel lines.
The legal battle between the two tech companies has been protracted, with both sides going on the offensive at different points. In June 2020, Google filed suit against Sonos, alleging the smart speaker maker had actually infringed several of its own patents. Sonos subsequently filed two more lawsuits alleging that Google had infringed several additional patents it held.
Sonos filed one of those two cases with the U.S. International Trade Commission, which ruled in January 2022 that Google had infringed a total of five of Sonos’ audio technology patents and barred it from importing the infringing products from China. However, the commission also found that Google had successfully redesigned its products to avoid the Sonos patents and could continue selling those reworked versions in U.S. stores — an allowance Sonos had fought to prevent.
In August 2022, Google fired another volley with two additional lawsuits, claiming the smaller company used seven different patented Google technologies to instill the so-called “magic” in Sonos software.
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: Two new misconduct lawsuits, one against publishing exec Kenny MacPherson and another against R&B star Jason Derulo; a ruling for Cardi B that a gossip blogger can’t use bankruptcy to escape a huge defamation judgment; a new Supreme Court case that’s “vitally important to the music industry”; and more.
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THE BIG STORY: Music #MeToo
The music industry was rocked last week by two new sexual misconduct lawsuits: one against a powerful publishing executive and another against a chart-topping R&B star.
In a complaint filed Wednesday, a woman named Sara Lewis leveled accusations of sexual assault and harassment against Kenny MacPherson, the CEO of Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s publishing unit. Lewis claimed she “endured an onslaught of unwanted sexual advances” from MacPherson while she worked as an A&R at Chrysalis Music during the mid-2000s when he served as the company’s president.
Through an attorney, MacPherson “vehemently” denied the allegations, stressing that the “unverified” claims stemmed from nearly two decades in the past. But Hipgnosis quickly placed him on leave of absence pending an internal investigation: “Hipgnosis Songs Fund has a policy of zero-tolerance to harassment or abuse,” a company spokesperson said.
A day later, a woman named Emaza Gibson accused singer Jason Derulo of repeatedly sexually harassing her, then dropping her from a deal with his Atlantic Records imprint Future History after she rebuffed his advances. He strongly denied the claims, calling them “completely false and hurtful.”
Nearly six years on from the start of the #MeToo movement, the music industry is experiencing a new wave of such accusations. Two women filed lawsuits late last year against Atlantic Records over sexual assault allegations against late co-founder Ahmet Ertegun; country star Jimmie Allen was hit with two sexual assault lawsuits in May; and Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter has been sued by three different women who claim he sexually assaulted them as minors in the 2000s.
Go read the entire story on the Derulo accusations here and the entire story on the MacPherson allegations here, featuring full breakdowns of the cases and access to the actual court documents.
Other top stories this week…
BETTER HAVE MY MONEY – Two years after Cardi B won a nearly $4 million defamation verdict against a YouTube host named Tasha K over her salacious lies about drug use, STDs and prostitution, a federal judge ruled that the gossip blogger could not use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying most of the judgment.
TRANSATLANTIC CUSTODY SETTLEMENT – Lawyers for Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner, currently locked in a very public divorce, said the former couple was close to an “amicable resolution” to end Turner’s unusual federal lawsuit, which cited international treaties on child abduction to demand the return of the couple’s two young daughters to her native England.
ELECTRIC ZOO SUITS MOUNT – A month after this year’s chaotic iteration of the Electric Zoo festival in New York, a group of ticket buyers filed a class action over what they called an “absolute fiasco.” The lawsuit is at least the fourth such lawsuit filed against Brooklyn promoter Avant Gardner, the organizer of the popular dance music event.
FILE THE SUIT, PAY THE PRICE? – Sam Smith and Normani demanded to be reimbursed for money they spent defeating a failed copyright lawsuit that accused them of ripping off their 2019 hit, “Dancing With a Stranger,” from an earlier song. The final legal bill? A whopping $732,202.
MUSIC BIZ HEADS TO SCOTUS – The U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari filed by Warner Music Group, agreeing to tackle a case over copyright damages that labels and publishers have called “vitally important to the music industry.” The case is complicated, so go read our deep-dive explainer here.
LADY GAGA DOGNAPPING CASE – A Los Angeles judge once again ruled that Lady Gaga was not obligated to pay a $500,000 reward for the return of her stolen French bulldogs to the very same woman who was criminally charged over the incident. Echoing an earlier ruling, the judge said the woman had “unclean hands” that prevented her from profiting from her actions.
‘MY HUMPS’ v. ‘MY POOPS’ – Abruptly ending what could have been a major battle over copyright fair use, BMG Rights Management reached a settlement to end a copyright lawsuit against toymaker MGA Entertainment over “My Poops” — a scatological parody song set to the tune of The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.”
TUPAC MURDER CASE UPDATE – Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the man who prosecutors say masterminded the 1996 shooting death of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, made his first court appearance. Davis, who had been a long-known suspect in the case and publicly admitted his role in the killing in a tell-all memoir, was indicted late last month on one count of murder with a deadly weapon.
Another group of Electric Zoo ticket buyers have filed a class action over what they call the “absolute fiasco” at this year’s festival, marking at least the fourth such lawsuit filed against promoter Avant Gardner, the organizer of the popular dance music event.
In a complaint filed Thursday in New York state court, lawyers for four attendees accused the Brooklyn-based company of false advertising, breach of contract and other wrongdoing over the event, which saw its Friday shows canceled at the last minute and Sunday plagued by problems.
“Normally this event is a transcendental audio-visual festival that creates everlasting thrilling memories for tens of thousands of EDM fans,” their lawyers wrote. “And while it did create everlasting memories in 2023, the memories created were not the ones which ticket holders were looking forward to.”
The “oversold, grossly understaffed” festival was “nothing short of an absolute fiasco,” attorneys for the concertgoers wrote, resulting in “long lines, massive overcrowding, and a literal stampede of people when it was discovered that the organizers oversold tickets.” The case was filed on behalf of Billy Ting, Duoc Vo, Garry Huang, Jeffrey Wang and Joshua Chin, but said it aims to represent as many as 75,000 ticketbuyers who had similar experiences.
Electric Zoo, held annually on New York City’s Randall’s Island, is one of the country’s top electronic dance festivals, but this year’s iteration – the second by Avant Gardner since the company acquired the festival in 2022 — was marred by issues.
First came an abrupt cancellation of Friday evening, meaning no performances by top names like The Chainsmokers and Kx5. That was followed by a delayed start and long lines on Saturday, and then a chaotic Sunday in which thousands of ticketholders were denied entry after the site reached capacity. Some fans jumped fences or ran through security checkpoints as a group.
Avant Gardner, which promised refunds for Friday and for anyone turned away on Sunday, blamed the problems on “global supply chain disruptions.” But sources later told Billboard that the Friday shutdown largely had stemmed from the promoter’s failure to pay vendors from last year’s festival, leading to a shortage of experienced concert professionals willing to work at this year’s event. Those shortages led to issues that caused city officials to withhold permitting approval until they were fixed. Citing internal sources, the New York Post also attributed the problems to staffing issues, as well as to a planning process that allegedly started months later than usual for a festival of its size and complexity.
Additionally, Sunday’s problems were caused by overselling the event by 7,000 people, according to an NYPD estimate reported by local news outlets. Shortly after the festival, Mayor Eric Adams suggested the city might launch an investigation into Avant Gardner over the debacle: “It’s unfortunate that the organizers wanted to turn our city into a zoo.”
Thursday’s lawsuit is at least the fourth such class action filed over the messy event. The first, filed on Sept. 13 in federal court, said Avant Gardner had caused “a nightmare endured by thousands of electronic music fans.” Another, filed just three days later in the same court, said the organizers had “lied to their guests at every opportunity.” In a third lawsuit, a Connecticut man said the festival’s “lack of planning and overselling of tickets” had caused dangerous overcrowding that caused him to “fear for his life.”
The specifics are varied, but all four lawsuits allege roughly similar forms of wrongdoing: That the Electric Zoo organizers misled ticket buyers, that they broke promises to concertgoers, and that they were negligent in failing to prevent the problems. Each case is seeking to represent hundreds or thousands of fans, and some or all of the cases could eventually be combined into a single, consolidated action.
A representative for Avant Gardner did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Electric Zoo class actions are only the latest legal issues for Avant Gardner, which operates an 80,000 square foot, multi-venue facility in Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg neighborhood. The company and owner Jürgen “Billy” Bildstein have clashed for years with the State Liquor Authority over allegations of drug use and other safety issues, including a 2020 agreement in which the company agreed to a $100,000 fine and to retain an independent safety monitor.
In August, that state-appointed monitor, T&M Security LLC, sued the company, claiming Avant Gardner had terminated the arrangement prematurely and then refused to pay its fees. A month earlier, another case claimed that security guards had assaulted patrons while searching them for drugs during a pride event.