State Champ Radio Legal News
Page: 59
Chris Brown and several members of his entourage, along with Brown’s 11:11 Tour promoter Live Nation, are facing a lawsuit over an alleged assault that took place following Brown’s concert in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday night.
Filed Monday (July 22) in Harris County district court by attorneys Tony Buzbee and Caroline Adams, the lawsuit claims that Brown and several accomplices “brutally and severely beat” four men — Larry Parker, Joseph Lewis, Charles Bush and Damarcus Powell — backstage at Dickies Arena in an unprovoked attack following the show.
“The violence included Brown and his entourage surrounding the Plaintiffs, throwing chairs at them, and repeatedly kicking, stomping, and beating them,” the complaint reads. “The unprovoked violence included multiple strikes to the Plaintiffs’ heads and chests, and ultimately involved stomping them while they were down. The brutal, violent assault participated in and directed by Brown, severely injured all Plaintiffs.”
Trending on Billboard
According to the complaint, the attack occurred after the four men were invited to the backstage VIP area following the show, where they allegedly waited 30 minutes for Brown to arrive. “Having grown tired of waiting,” the complaint reads, the men began making their way to the exit, at which point Bush says he approached Brown to shake his hand and congratulate him on the concert. After exchanging pleasantries, a member of Brown’s crew then allegedly shouted to Brown, “Man, you don’t remember you two were beefing?” The lawsuit claims that Brown then replied, “Oh yeah, we were…I don’t forget sh–” before instructing his entourage to “f—” Bush up.
At that point, the plaintiffs claim that Brown, along with “seven to ten members” of his crew, followed them into a hallway as they were attempting to leave and attacked them. “One of Brown’s entourage, known by the alias Sinko, ran to the left side of the crowd and punched Bush in the chest,” the complaint reads. “Simultaneously, another of Brown’s entourage, stage alias Hood Boss, picked up a chair and threw it at Bush’s head.”
The complaint says that Parker was also badly beaten after Brown allegedly instructed another member of his entourage, Markies Deandre Conway (a.k.a. Yella Beezy), and several others to “f—” him up. After fleeing into a stairwell, the lawsuit claims Parker became trapped by a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, where he was subsequently attacked by Brown and several other men.
“Upon instruction by Brown, Parker was then punched in the face and chest, kicked in the head for over ten minutes, and stomped on by Defendant Brown and his associates,” the complaint alleges. “Brown encouraged his companions to join in the assault simultaneously. Brown and his entourage then continued to beat Plaintiff Parker closed fisted for almost minutes, repeatedly stomping on Defendant Parker’s head, kicking his face and ribs, and causing severe bodily injury.”
Brown and his crew are also accused of punching Powell in the shoulder and punching Lewis in the shoulder and chest.
The complaint claims that all four men required medical treatment and that Parker was hospitalized and “will need to undergo extensive medical treatment for the damages he suffered in the attack, including head injuries.”
In addition to Brown, the lawsuit names three members of his entourage — Conway, Hood Boss (a.k.a. Omololu Omari Akinlolu) and Sinko Ceej — as defendants. As for Live Nation, the complaint alleges that the concert promoter continued working with Brown despite his history of “bad conduct and violent conduct.” According to the lawsuit, the company “shamelessly profits and promotes Brown’s The 11:11 Tour and brought Brown to Texas for financial gain. Live Nation failed to insure that the [participants] of the concert who may be around Brown, and his associates, were safe.”
The plaintiffs are asking for compensatory and punitive damages “in excess [of] $50 million,” along with actual damages for “pecuniary losses, pain and suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, and past, present, and future medical expenses,” among other relief.
In making its case, the plaintiffs’ attorneys make note of several of the defendants’ criminal histories, alleging that Ceej was a member of “the blood gang” and spent “at least eight years in prison” and that Conway, “a former Crip gang member,” has been arrested multiple times for firearm possession and sexual assault.
The lawsuit additionally recounts Brown’s well-publicized brushes with the law, including the singer’s guilty plea for beating his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, for which he was sentenced to five years’ probation and community service and forced to undergo domestic violence counseling. Brown has been arrested and/or sued multiple times for various instances of alleged physical and sexual assault, including by multiple women and his former manager, Michael Guirguis. In 2014, Brown pleaded guilty to simple assault for punching a man in the face the previous year.
Representatives for Brown, Live Nation and Conway did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment. Representatives for Akinlolu and Ceej could not be located for comment.
SoundExchange is suing a free streaming service called AccuRadio over allegations that the company failed to pay royalties for music, claiming the streamer has “directly harmed creators.”
In a lawsuit filed Friday in Washington D.C. federal court, SoundExchange accused AccuRadio of violating the federal law that governs how radio-like services pay royalties to record labels and artists for the right to publicly perform copyrighted sound recordings.
SoundExchange – the non-profit that collects and distributes such “statutory royalties” – says AccuRadio had always paid its full bill until 2016, when its payments “slowed” and then finally stopped in 2018.
“AccuRadio has directly harmed creators over the years by refusing to pay royalties for the use of protected recordings,” said Michael Huppe, SoundExchange’s president and CEO said in a statement on Monday. “Today, SoundExchange is standing up for creators through this lawsuit to protect the value of music and ensure creators are compensated fairly for their work. We hope AccuRadio will immediately reverse course and pay what they owe for the use of the music that sits at the foundation of its service.”
Trending on Billboard
Founded in 2000, AccuRadio boasts that it is “the only online music streaming service curated by human beings, not algorithms.” The company offers hundreds of ad-supported free music channels that users can further customize, including skipping songs they don’t like.
According to SoundExchange, after AccuRadio stopped paying its royalty bill, the two sides have attempted to negotiate a solution for years, including a so-called forbearance agreement last year in which the streamer agreed to make a set down payment and then regular additional payments. But after three months, SoundExchance claims AccuRadio defaulted on that agreement, too.
“The cumulative amount of defendant’s underpayment – which harms SoundExchange, as well as the performing artists and copyright owners on whose behalf it collects and distributes royalties – continues to grow with each passing month,” SoundExchange’s lawyers write in their complaint.
In addition to demanding payment, the lawsuit is seeking a preliminary injunction that would immediately force AccuRadio to either pay up or stop offering copyrighted music to its listenership.
“While defendant has defaulted on the payments due pursuant to the forbearance agreement, it continues to operate its multichannel internet radio service, providing access to over a thousand pre-developed music channels and access to millions of sound recordings,” the lawsuit reads. “Injunctive relief is reasonably necessary to stop defendant from abusing the statutory license and incurring further damages throughout the pendency of this litigation.”
AccuRadio did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
More than a dozen NBA teams are facing copyright lawsuits from Kobalt and other music companies over allegations that the basketball teams used songs in social media videos without permission.
In 14 separate actions filed in federal court Friday, Kobalt and others accused each club of using copyrighted music in promotional videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) to “increase viewership” and “engage its fanbase.”
In the case against the New York Knicks, the music companies accused the team of using songs by “New York legends” Jay-Z and Cardi B. The case against the Philadelphia 76ers cited use of songs by Philly native Meek Mill. In the action against Atlanta Hawks, the complaint said the club had used music by “Atlanta’s own” Migos and OutKast.
But in each case, the overarching allegation was the same – that a sophisticated corporate entity had stolen music that it knew it was supposed to pay for.
Trending on Billboard
“Defendants are acutely aware of the protections that the copyright laws of the United States afford,” lawyers for the music companies wrote in language that appeared in each lawsuit. “[The team] utilizes the full extent of legal protections available for its own intellectual property while simultaneously knowingly and willfully infringing on the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs.”
In addition to the Knicks, 76ers and Hawks, the lawsuits targeted the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Heat, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the New Orleans Pelicans, the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Sacramento Kings and the San Antonio Spurs.
A spokesman for the NBA did not immediately return a request for comment.
The other music companies who signed onto the lawsuits include Artist Publishing Group, Notting Hill Music and Prescription Songs.
Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate synch license, just like a conventional ad on television.
In recent years, music owners have cracked down on brands that blur those lines on social media. All three major labels sued drink maker Bang Energy for using hundreds of copyrighted songs in TikTok videos, with Universal and Sony eventually winning judgments. The owner of the “Space Jam” song has filed several lawsuits over the past year, including suing a minor league baseball team that used the famed 1990s track in a Facebook video. And earlier this month, the Beastie Boys sued the owner of Chili’s for using the trio’s “Sabotage” in social media clips that spoofed the song’s famous music video.
Attorneys for Priscilla Presley are suing four of her former business partners over allegations of elder abuse and fraud, accusing them of a “meticulously planned” scheme to drain Elvis Presley’s ex-wife of “every last penny she had.”
In a complaint filed Thursday (July 18) in Los Angeles court, lawyers for Presley, 79, accuse Brigitte Kruse, Kevin Fialko, Vahe Sislyan and Lynn Walker Wright of fraudulently convincing her to give them power over nearly every aspect of her life — and then abusing that control to steal her money.
“This action arises out of a meticulously planned and abhorrent scheme by the defendants in this action to prey on an older woman by gaining her trust, isolating her from the most important people in her life, and duping her into believing that they would take care of her (personally and financially), while their real goal was to drain her of every last penny she had,” writes high-profile attorney Martin Singer, who now represents Presley.
Trending on Billboard
Calling Kruse a “con-artist and pathological liar,” Singer says the defendants took more than $1 million from Presley and convinced her to sign a deal that would give them 80% of her future income.
“The fact that the plaintiff in this case is internationally recognized actress, author, and cultural icon … demonstrates both how effective the defendants’ plan was (and needed to be), and how anyone can be a victim of elder abuse and fraud,” Singer writes.
The new case comes eight months after Kruse’s company, Priscilla Presley Partners, filed its own lawsuit against Priscilla in Florida. That case claimed that Presley illegally turned her back on Kruse and Fialko after they had helped her “dig herself out of impending financial ruin,” including negotiating the deal that led to last year’s Priscilla biopic.
But in Thursday’s new lawsuit, Singer argues that the earlier case was merely a cover for Kruse and Fialko’s alleged misdeeds.
“When it became clear to the defendants that their scheme had been uncovered, they attempted to falsely portray themselves as the victims by filing a lawsuit against Presley in Florida in the name of several of the sham companies they established, alleging that Presley breached the fraudulently-induced operating agreements,” her legal team writes.
According to the complaint, Sislyan is Kruse’s husband and participated in the scheme; and Walker-Wright is an Orlando-area attorney who allegedly helped the others carry it out.
Singer and Priscilla’s other attorneys say that Kruse and the others “established a personal relationship” with her and then used it to “isolate her from her long-time business and financial advisors,” whom they argued were “deceitful or incompetent” and causing her to lose money. Once they had isolated her, the lawsuit says, Kruse and the others took steps to “fraudulently induce” Presley into signing over power of attorney, giving them control over her trusts and bank accounts, and signing deals with “sham” companies like Priscilla Presley Partners.
One of those deals, the lawsuit says, gave the defendants “an exclusive license to exploit and profit off of her name, image, and likeness, and to control and receive virtually all of her income from any of her professional ventures.”
“Dissatisfied with what existing resources they could siphon from her, the defendants’ plan involved usurping control over her ability to control her finances going forward and forcing her into a form of indentured servitude, where plaintiff was forced to work so that they could receive the lion’s share of any revenue that she was able to earn in the future,” Singer writes.
An attorney for Kruse and Priscilla Presley Partners did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations. Walker-Wright also did not return a request for comment.
Melissa Etheridge is facing a legal battle over her brief foray into the cannabis business, filed by two business partners in Northern California who claim that the singer “abandoned them” and left them in “financial ruin.”
The Grammy-winning songwriter, who rose to stardom in the 1990s with hits like “Come to My Window” and “I’m The Only One,” announced in 2019 that she would launch Etheridge Farms, which aimed to bring the benefits of cannabis to middle-aged women. “They’re looking to cannabis, and I want Etheridge Farms to be right there to answer what they’re looking for,” the singer said at the time.
But five years later, her former business partners now claim that Etheridge and her wife effectively torpedoed the company by refusing to support it. In a legal petition filed July 9 and obtained by Billboard, Josephine and D’Angelo Roberto say they’ve been “left with nothing.”
Trending on Billboard
“The Robertos trusted the Etheridges and invested their life’s work into the businesses,” writes attorney Christopher Frost of the law firm Frost LLP, representing the Robertos. “Unfortunately, their hard work did not end in a success story, but rather betrayal and abandonment.”
The filing is a demand for arbitration, which initiates a litigation-like case that will play out similar to a lawsuit. But such cases, often required under corporate operating agreements, are decided by an arbitrator behind closed doors rather than by a judge in an open courtroom.
Representatives for the Etheridges, including their attorney who received the arbitration demand, did not return repeated requests for comment on the dispute. Attorneys for the Robertos declined to comment.
A Budding Partnership
The Robertos (nicknamed Jozee and Cricket) say they met Etheridge and her wife Linda Wallem-Etheridge via mutual friends in Northern California in 2017, and that the foursome then hatched a plan to launch a series of cannabis businesses, including Etheridge Farms and Etheridge Botanicals. In a 2019 article in San Jose’s Mercury News, the singer said she had been inspired in part by using cannabis amid a battle with breast cancer in the 2000s.
“I came out of chemotherapy saying, I want to be an advocate for this, I believe in this as medicine so deeply,” she told the Mercury News. “I started looking around California going, OK, what do I need to do — I want to be part of this — I actually turned to my friends and said, I want to be the face of cannabis.” In that same article, Jozee was quoted as saying that the Etheridges “genuinely share the same values that Cricket and I share about health and wellbeing.”
According to legal filings, the group secured a rental lease in 2018 on a large facility in Soquel, Calif. to manufacture and distribute their products, and also locked down important regulatory licenses for that property.
The plan, according to the Robertos, was for the couple to contribute their extensive cannabis industry expertise and work on product development, while the Etheridges would use their celebrity status to promote the business, seek outside investors, and continue to support the business financially.
Left High and Dry?
But while the Robertos say they “devoted every ounce of their money, time and attention” to the businesses, they claim the Etheridges failed to do the same. They say she failed to promote the business, and then stopped supporting the business financially. According to legal filings, by 2020 that allegedly included failing to pay the rent at the Soquel facility as promised; when the landlord finally booted them, the Robertos say it cost the business crucial regulatory licenses that had been tied to that property.
“Despite their persistent efforts, following the Etheridges’ complete lack of engagement and financial support to the Etheridge entities, the LLC sales and performance eventually withered away,” attorneys for the couple write in the demand for arbitration.
The alleged breakdown in the business came amid great personal tragedy for Etheridge. In May 2020, the singer announced that Beckett Cypher, her son with former partner Julie Cypher, had died from causes related to opioid addiction. Months later, the singer launched the Etheridge Foundation to advocate for and support research into new treatments for opioid addiction.
Those tragic events are not directly mentioned in the new legal filings, but attorneys for the Robertos allude to them in making their case.
“The Etheridges suffered personal losses for which the Robertos have much empathy,” the couple’s lawyers write in their filing earlier this month. “However, notwithstanding these personal losses and given the challenges faced by the parties, the Etheridges ultimately decided to let all of the joint ventures ‘die on the vine,’ stopped covering expenses that they promised to pay, and left the Robertos in a much worse situation.”
In technical terms, the demand for arbitration accuses the Etheridges of breaching their fiduciary duty to the companies; breaching their contract with the Robertos; violating legal promises they made to the couple; and making fraudulent and negligent misrepresentations.
The pair are seeking an undetermined amount of damages, but say they’re entitled to at least $3 million: “The Robertos have not pursued this action and are not proceeding to arbitration for fame or fortune or as a vendetta,” their lawyers write. “Rather, they simply seek compensation for the suffering they have had to endure and the financial ruin they have experienced due to the Etheridges abandoning them.”
The lawsuits filed by the major labels against the AI companies Suno and Udio could be the most important cases to the music business since the Supreme Court Grokster decision, as I explained in last week’s Follow the Money column. The outcomes are hard to predict, however, because the central issue will be “fair use,” a U.S. legal doctrine shaped by judicial decisions that involves famously — sometimes notoriously — nuanced determinations about art and appropriation. And although most creators focus more on issues around generative AI “outputs” — music they’ll have to compete with or songs that might sound similar to theirs — these cases involve the legality of copying music for the purposes of training AI.
Neither Suno nor Udio has said how they’re trained their AI programs, but both have essentially said that copying music in order to do so would qualify as fair use. Determining that could touch on the development of Google Books, the compatibility of the Android operating system, and even a Supreme Court case that involves Prince, Andy Warhol and Vanity Fair. It’s the kind of fair use case that once inspired a judge to call copyright “the metaphysics of the law.” So let’s get metaphysical!
Trending on Billboard
Fair use essentially provides exceptions to copyright, usually for the purpose of free expression, allowing for quotation (as in book or film reviews) and parody (to comment on art), among other things. (The iconic example in music is the Supreme Court case over 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.”) These determinations involve a four-factor test that weighs “the purpose and character of the use”; “the nature of the copyrighted work”; how much and how important a part of the work is used; and the effect of the use upon the potential market value of the copyrighted work. Over the last decade or so, though, the concept of “transformative use,” derived from the first factor, expanded in a way that allowed the development of Google Books (the copying of books to create a database and excerpts) and the use of some Oracle API code in Google’s Android system — which could arguably be said to go beyond the origins of the concept.
Could copying music for the purposes of machine learning qualify as well?
In a paper on the topic, “Fair Use in the U.S. Redux: Reformed or Still Deformed,” the influential Columbia Law School professor Jane Ginsburg suggests that the influence of the transformative use argument might have reached its peak. (I am oversimplifying a very smart paper, and if you are interested in this topic, you should read it.)
The Supreme Court decision on the Google-Oracle case involved part of a computer program, far from the creative “core” of copyright, and music recordings would presumably be judged differently. The Supreme Court also made a very different decision last year in a case that pitted the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts against prominent rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The case involved an Andy Warhol silkscreen of Prince, based on a Goldsmith photograph that the magazine Vanity Fair had licensed for Warhol to use. Warhol used the photo for an entire series — which Goldsmith only found out about when the magazine used the silkscreen image again for a commemorative issue after Prince died.
On the surface, this seemed to cast the Supreme Court Justices as modern art critics, in a position to judge all appropriation art as infringing. But the case wasn’t about whether Warhol’s silkscreen inherently infringed Goldsmith’s copyright but about whether it infringed it for licensed use by a magazine, in a way where it could compete with the original photo. There was a limit to transformative use, after all. “The same copying,” the court decided, “may be fair when used for one purpose but not another.”
So it might constitute fair use for Google to copy entire books for the purpose of creating a searchable database about those books with excerpts from them, as it did for Google Books — but not necessarily for Suno or Udio to copy terabytes of recordings to spur the creation of new works to compete with them, especially if it results in similar works. In the first case, it’s hard to find real economic harm — there will never be much of a market for licensing book databases — but there’s already a nascent market for licensing music to train AI programs. And, unlike Google Books, the AI programs are designed to make music to compete with the recordings used to train them. Obviously, licensing music to train an AI program is what we might call a secondary use — but so is turning a book into a film, and no one doubts they need permission for that.
All of this might seem like I think the major labels will win their cases, but that’s a tough call — the truth is that I just don’t think they’ll lose. And there’s a lot of space between victory and defeat here. If one of these cases ends up going to the Supreme Court — and if one of these doesn’t, another case about AI training surely will within the next few years — the decision might be more limited than either side is looking for, since the court has tended to step lightly around technology issues.
It’s also possible that the decision could depend on whether the outputs that result from all of this training are similar enough to copyrighted works to qualify, or plausibly qualify, as infringing. Both label lawsuits are full of such examples, presumably because that could make a difference. These cases are about the legality of AI inputs, but a fair use determination on that issue could easily involve whether those inputs lead to infringing output.
In the end, Ginsburg suggests, “system designers may need to disable features that would allow users to create recognizable copies.” Except that — let’s face it — isn’t that really part of the fun? Sure, AI music creation might eventually grow to maturity as some kind of art form — it already has enormous practical value for songwriters — but for ordinary consumers it’s still hard to beat Frank Sinatra singing Lil Jon’s “Get Low.” Of course, that could put a significant burden on AI companies — with severe consequences for crossing a line that won’t always be obvious. It might be easier to just license the content they need. The next questions, which will be the subject of future columns, involve exactly what they need to license and how they might do that, since it won’t be easy to get all the rights they need — or in some cases even agree on who controls them.
Michael Jackson’s estate has won a tentative court ruling that would allow it to proceed with a $600 million sale of the singer’s catalog to Sony Music, overcoming objections from his mother that aimed to block the deal.
Katherine Jackson had argued that the gargantuan deal violated the terms of Michael’s will, but a California appeals court tentatively ruled Wednesday (July 17) that she had “forfeited” that argument by failing to make it before a lower probate court.
Even if she had properly raised that argument, the appeals court said the estate’s executors had the power to make the deal. The court said Jackson’s will had vested the executors (John Branca and John McClain) with the authority to “sell, invest, or otherwise manage estate property” while they were in charge.
Trending on Billboard
“The court is tentatively inclined to affirm the probate court’s order granting the executors’ request to proceed with the proposed transaction,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling, obtained by Billboard. “We tentatively conclude that Katherine’s challenge fails on the merits because the probate court’s order does not violate the terms of Michael’s will.”
Such “tentative” rulings must be finalized before they are formally entered, but they strongly indicate the way the court is planning to rule. An attorney for Katherine did not return a request for comment on Thursday. A rep for the Jackson estate declined to comment. News of the tentative ruling was first reported by Rolling Stone.
As reported by Billboard earlier this year, the Jackson estate and Sony Music have reached a deal that will see the music giant buy half of the singer’s publishing and recorded masters catalog for more than $600 million.
But because the Jackson estate is still pending before a Los Angeles probate court more than 15 years after his 2009 death, his executors took the then-confidential deal to Judge Mitchell Beckloff for approval. When they did so, Katherine filed objections — among them that the sale “violated Michael’s wishes” and that the catalog would likely continue to gain value over time if retained.
In April 2023, Beckloff rejected those objections and ruled that the deal could move forward. Katherine then filed an appeal, resulting in Wednesday’s tentative decision.
The wrangling over the Sony deal has exposed rifts among Jackson’s heirs. In March, Jackson’s son Blanket asked the judge to stop his grandmother from using estate money to fund her efforts to block the Sony deal. Though both had initially opposed the sale, Blanket and Jackson’s other children accepted the probate judge’s decision allowing it to move forward.
Later that same week, the estate responded to claims from Katherine’s attorneys that she needed estate money to pay for her legal battle, arguing she had received more than $55 million since the singer’s death. The estate’s executors argued that “virtually no request of Mrs. Jackson for her care or maintenance has been declined,” including more than $33 million in cash.
As detailed in a Billboard feature profile this week, entertainment attorney John Branca represents many of pop music’s biggest legacy artists — most famously, the Michael Jackson estate, of which he is co-executor. But Branca is no lone wolf. His partners in the music department at Ziffren Brittenham — David Byrnes, David Lande, Mitch Tenzer and Kelly Vallon — make up, he says, “the most important contemporary music practice of any law firm in the world.” Certainly, along with Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, and Taylor Swift attorney Donald S. Passman’s firm, Gang Tyre Ramer, it is one of the premier law firms for the music industry.
Lande primarily represents Selena Gomez, Pharrell Williams, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, Rosalía and Justin Timberlake (when asked if Timberlake called him after his recent DUI arrest, Lande answers, “No, I called him”), and Byrnes’ principal clients include Travis Scott, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton and the estates of Kurt Cobain, Mac Miller, Tom Petty and Eazy-E — hardly even an exhaustive list of their or the firm’s clients. But the partners all work collaboratively to serve the firm’s clientele, which also includes industry executives.
Trending on Billboard
For example, Byrnes and Lande represent Beyoncé as a team. Lande — who served as a tour manager and tour accountant for such artists as Elton John and Madonna during breaks from his undergraduate and law school years — says he was involved in every aspect of the 2023 Renaissance world tour, “from making the initial deal with Live Nation, reviewing all of the business plans, working with her and her team on what that business would look like as a tour, to ultimately its execution.” Byrnes, who worked on the MTV show I.R.S. Records Presents: The Cutting Edge and as an editor at the now-defunct music trade publication Cashbox, consulted with the firm’s film/TV department to negotiate deals for Beyoncé’s 2019 and 2020 films, Homecoming and Black Is King, respectively. Tenzer and Vallon work on many clients.
Given the depth and breadth of their music industry experience, legal and otherwise — Tenzer was director of business affairs at Sony Music, and Vallon’s résumé includes roles at CAA, AEG, several labels and The Colbert Report, for example — “We have really good market knowledge of what’s cutting edge and what’s achievable, and we all end up being business advisers to our clients — helping them think through deal structure and the kinds of deals they ought to do,” Lande says.
With more artists preferring independence over label deals and labels holding off on signing acts until they build a significant fan base, the deals before the firm’s music department have evolved significantly. “There’s a plethora of independent distributors and labels out there offering development-type deals, and we’re dealing with those every day,” Byrnes says.
And Lande explains that artists are now more interested in building long-term value through equity. “Years ago, it was just, ‘Pay me this amount of money and I will endorse your product or service,’ ” he says. Those deals still happen, but “more and more, our clients are entering joint ventures, funding things themselves and building businesses that capitalize on their celebrity in an organic way. They take more risk by doing that, and it takes a longer time to build value,” he continues. “But the ultimate payoff is significant.”
This story will appear in the July 20, 2024, issue of Billboard.
John Branca stopped collecting his clients’ RIAA gold and platinum record awards decades ago. Those he has that are not in storage or at his office — approximately 20 — are displayed, along with other music memorabilia, in four rooms of his Italian villa-style home in affluent Beverly Park, a gated community in the Los Angeles hills. The records are etched with some of the most recognizable names and album titles in pop and rock history: the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Santana’s Supernatural, The Best of The Doors and others from Elton John, Nirvana, Backstreet Boys, Usher, Alanis Morissette, Enrique Iglesias and Michael Jackson.
A partner and the head of the music department at L.A. entertainment law firm Ziffren Brittenham, Branca has represented 30 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees over his 47 years as an entertainment lawyer. But he’s most closely associated with Jackson, especially since the pop legend’s untimely death at the age of 50 on June 25, 2009, brought on by a heart-stopping mixture of sedatives and the anesthetic propofol.
Trending on Billboard
Branca, who had represented Jackson on and off since 1980, had rejoined the pop star’s team just eight days earlier, six years after Jackson had terminated Branca’s services in a letter that offered no explanation for his decision. On July 1, he was appointed co-executor of his estate with former record executive John McClain, based on a 2002 will that Branca produced for the court. Jackson left everything to his children (Prince, Paris and Bigi); his mother, Katherine Jackson; and charity, but his estate was almost $500 million in debt.
Now 73, Branca was just 29 and working for then-prominent entertainment attorney David Braun when Jackson — who was seeking independence both from his family (including his notorious manager father, Joe Jackson) and as an artist — hired the young attorney. The two grew close: Jackson was best man at Branca’s first wedding, which Little Richard officiated, and until their parting, Branca was instrumental in helping Jackson become an artist who, at his apogee, was the Taylor Swift of his time. But Branca sees it differently. “I prefer to say she’s the Michael Jackson of this time,” he says with a wry smile, sitting in the so-called “tennis house” next to his personal court. “If there was a Mount Rushmore of pop artists,” he adds, “you’d have Elvis, The Beatles and Michael.”
Fifteen years after Jackson’s death, Branca remains an effective steward of his estate. In addition to adding approximately $3 billion in net revenue to its coffers through publishing acquisitions and negotiating better terms for Jackson’s catalog including ownership of his master recordings, among others, he has maintained the late artist’s cultural relevance through a number of theatrical productions, documentaries and, next year, a biopic — all of which have kept Jackson’s brand from being defined by T-shirts and coffee mugs while maintaining focus on his art instead of the allegations of sexual abuse that surfaced late in his life and followed him after death.
Branca also remains a fierce defender of Jackson’s crown as the King of Pop. He professes immense admiration for Swift’s accomplishments, including her blockbuster 2023 concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, but he refutes media reports from earlier this year asserting that its box-office yields had surpassed those of the posthumous 2009 Jackson documentary, This Is It, saying inflation wasn’t taken into account. According to Box Office Mojo, The Eras Tour grossed $261.7 million and This Is It grossed $268 million — or, in 2024 dollars, roughly $267 million for the former and $390 million for the latter.
Then there’s the May New York Times story that compared Swift to Jackson, The Beatles and other artists, pointing out that the 10 solo albums Jackson released between 1972 and 2001 have been RIAA-certified platinum 72 times, with Thriller accounting for 34 of them (making it one of the most successful albums of all time). Swift currently has 50 certified platinum albums — although the Times article reported that her sales indicate the number will be closer to 90 once her “Taylor’s Version” releases are counted. But Branca says Jackson’s certifications do not account for his popularity overseas. “Two-thirds of Michael’s sales are outside the United States,” he notes — sales that the RIAA does not count when issuing gold and platinum albums. That international appeal has carried over to the streaming era: Jackson’s combined U.S. streams for 2020 through 2022 made up 28% of his combined global streams, according to Luminate. He also points out that multiple streams of a single song can count as an album, which was not the case when physical sales were the only measurement of a record’s success.
Branca is a walking, talking compendium of numbers and reasons that Jackson belongs on that pop Rushmore, and preaches that gospel to his 29,200 followers on TikTok, where he has posted 70 videos — the majority of them about Jackson, among others about Branca’s own memorabilia and business philosophies.
But regarding the estate’s business dealings and litigation, he is a tomb.
When questions veer into that territory, his response is usually a version of “This isn’t going to be another story about the Jackson estate, is it?” He has a point. In addition to the RIAA awards on his wall, over his career Branca has represented Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Neil Diamond, The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s Northern Songs publishing catalog, the Elvis Presley estate, The Rolling Stones, Earth, Wind & Fire and Motown founder Berry Gordy.
The son of an actress-dancer who appeared in a number of Elvis’ films and an athletic commissioner for New York State, Branca grew up in the New York suburb of Mount Vernon and moved to Los Angeles at age 11. In his teens, he played guitar and keyboards in two rock bands, The Other Half and The Pasternak Progress. “I signed a record deal at 16, but I was forced to go to college by my mother,” he says.
Christopher Patey
Today, Branca still projects a Beverly Hills version of that youthful rock’n’roll aesthetic. His car collection includes two Rolls-Royces (a white 2023 Cullinan and a blue 2016 Dawn). He sold the Ferrari 458 Spider that he once told Billboard he would hang “from the ceiling in my living room if I could” — and he has turned heads at Grammy parties with a beautiful woman in tow. (Married three times, Branca is currently single.)
But that exterior flash conceals “an incredible strategist,” says David Lande, a Ziffren Brittenham partner who also represents music clients. As such, Branca declines to discuss pressing questions regarding the estate, including Katherine Jackson’s appeal of a judge’s 2023 ruling that let the estate move forward with its then-confidential $625 million sale of 50% of Jackson’s assets to Sony Music. (California’s Second Appellate District Court in Los Angeles has since issued a tentative ruling that sides with the estate.)
He also deflects queries about the role that co-executor McClain plays in estate administration. A former executive at A&M Records and Interscope, and a key figure in Janet Jackson’s success, McClain has A&R’d all posthumous releases of Jackson’s music, but he has otherwise been virtually invisible since Jackson’s will was probated, in part due to health issues. Branca only says: “For all his genius, John shuns the spotlight.”
The Sony assets sale is off-limits as well — but according to three sources familiar with the deal, the estate retained Jackson’s public image and likeness rights, which means that Sony does not get a cut of projects such as the various productions of MJ: The Musical and the biopic that is slated to open in April 2025. (Actor Miles Teller will portray Branca.)
Those sources also tell Billboard that the estate retains control and management of how the assets Sony acquired can be used moving forward. Branca says only that the sale will not change the business strategy that Jackson mandated when he was alive: “Everything has to be authentic and true to the artist.”
The deal values Jackson’s assets at $1.25 billion — the highest of any artist in history, including the recent $1 billion to $1.2 billion valuation assigned to Queen’s coveted assets (which Sony is reported to be buying). Unlike the Jackson deal, sources say the Queen sale includes name, image and likeness rights.
The $3 billion that the estate has earned includes its take from box-office receipts from several Jackson-themed theatrical productions, which Branca says have grossed close to $2 billion, among them two Cirque du Soleil shows; The Immortal World Tour, which ran from 2011 to 2014 and grossed $360 million, according to Billboard Boxscore; and Michael Jackson: One, which has been playing at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas since 2013. On Broadway, MJ: The Musical has grossed over $202.5 million and attracted almost 1.4 million theatergoers since opening in February 2022, according to The Broadway League. The jukebox musical opened on London’s West End in March; will debut in Hamburg, Germany, in November; has toured North America since August 2023; and Branca says a fifth production will debut at the Sydney Opera House next February and tour the world. The U.S. touring version, he adds, “outgrosses the Broadway show.”
The recent success of the musical and anticipation of the biopic, Michael, which stars Jermaine Jackson’s son Jaafar Jackson in the title role, have deflected the spotlight from the disturbing allegations revealed in the 2019 HBO docuseries Leaving Neverland, in which two men accused Jackson of sexually abusing them as children. (The case is currently in arbitration; Branca declines to comment on the film or the estate’s lawsuit against HBO over it.)
Branca does allude to the documentary when discussing his perspective on the use of artificial intelligence in the music industry. “AI is a tool if it’s used properly, and from what I’ve seen, it will never replace the emotional attachment that a fan has to the real artist,” he says. But he also contends, “It’s important to have a regulatory environment where artists can control their [intellectual property] and their brand.” And that control, he asserts, should extend beyond their lives.
“Libel laws only extend to a living artist. Once they pass away, anybody can say anything, and in my opinion, that’s reckless and not fair,” he says. “There should be legislation that protects an artist’s reputation and brand for a period after their death — whether it’s 10 years or 20 years. You can still say things that are truthful, but you can’t make stuff up.”
It’s an idea that would have a profound effect on journalism and media, and Branca has taken steps to make it reality. “We’ve talked to the legislature in Vermont, which is very progressive, about a pilot program for protection of the deceased,” he says. “It’s been put in front of certain legislators who are interested in it, but it’s embryonic at this point.”
Over the course of his career, Branca says he’s proudest of “fighting for artists’ rights,” a mission that extends far beyond his work for the Jackson estate. “I got the Bee Gees the ownership of their recordings from [Australian music impresario Robert] Stigwood. I got Don Henley back the ownership of his Eagles songs,” he says. For The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels tour, “I negotiated the touring structure in which there was a single national tour promoter who guaranteed not only ticket sales, merchandising and all other rights in one bundle” — a then-game-changing deal that is now standard practice for major artists — “and brought them and their catalog to Richard Branson to establish Virgin Records.” He extracted Carlos Santana from his Island Records contract and reunited him with Clive Davis, which resulted in the smash success of Supernatural and, for John Fogerty, obtained artist royalties for the first time on his Creedence Clearwater Revival recordings.
Branca attributes this conviction to growing up in the late ’60s “during the anti-Vietnam, anti-establishment era.” That said, righteousness runs in his family. His uncle, Ralph Branca, was a three-time MLB All-Star who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the ’40s and ’50s. To sports fans, he is the pitcher who gave up the “Shot Heard Round the World” — New York Giant Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run that won the National League pennant for his team in 1951. But Ralph also ranks as a hero in the history of civil rights as the white team member who befriended MLB’s first Black player, Jackie Robinson.
“Ralph embraced Jackie,” says Della Britton, president/CEO of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. On opening day of the 1947 season, when Robinson made his MLB debut, Ralph lined up next to him when other players refused. “John’s father [John R. Branca; the son is John G.] said to Ralph, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Britton explains. “At the time, Jackie was receiving death threats, and Ralph’s brother was worried that someone would take a shot at him, and if they missed, hit Ralph.” Ralph’s reply? Britton says: “ ‘I would have died a hero.’ ”
In the tennis house, where his uncle’s Dodgers uniform hangs framed on the wall, Branca wipes away tears as he talks about his uncle and his father, who was a high school pitcher. “He threw two no-hitters and was the New York State player of the year, but he got drafted in World War II,” he says. “I read Ralph’s autobiography, and he said that the [MLB] clubs overlooked my father because he was 5 foot 10 or 11 inches and he didn’t throw 95 [mph] like Ralph. But he said, ‘Today, Johnny would be looked at like Greg Maddux: control, control, control.’ ”
Like his late uncle, Branca serves on the board of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Dylan, the youngest of his three children, is a pitcher on New York University’s baseball team, and Branca funded an indoor practice facility in downtown Manhattan so that the players did not have to take the ferry to Staten Island. He also funded the Branca Family Field at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Jackie Robinson Stadium. (Branca got his law degree at UCLA and is a donor and board member of various schools there.)
His most recent philanthropic effort is tied to music. In June, he announced a $5 million gift to establish the John Branca Institute of Music at his undergraduate alma mater, L.A.’s Occidental College. His contribution will support the expansion of the college’s music program — one of Billboard’s top music business schools for the past several years.
The gift came with Branca’s caveat that the institute must “focus on contemporary music. I said, ‘Go back as far as you need to go back, but you must include the rock era — you know, Muddy Waters and Elvis through to what’s going on today,’ ” he says. “They’re going to do a class on the creation of a song and how it’s marketed. They’re going to come at it from a more liberal arts perspective, so somebody majoring in economics or philosophy can benefit and get a real knowledge of the music business. They may teach a class on Taylor Swift. They may teach a class on Michael Jackson, which would be pretty cool.”
And while he may not want to be known solely for his work with Jackson, Branca isn’t looking to put the man in the rearview mirror. Asked if he would have considered selling 100% of the estate’s assets to Sony, he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I feel it’s important to pass Michael’s legacy on to his kids. So owning his name and likeness; always having 50% of the catalog and management control; the personal property: the warehouses, his Rolls-Royces, his chess set — everything goes to the kids. That’s how it should be.”
Additional reporting by Ed Christman.
This story will appear in the July 20, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Attorneys for Live Nation want the judge presiding over the company’s historic antitrust case to dismiss the Department of Justice’s allegations that the concert promoter uses illegal tying arrangements to operate its amphitheaters, arguing it has no obligation to allow rival promoters to use the venues it owns or manages.
Live Nation’s co-lead trial counsel Alfred C. Pfeiffer of Latham Watkins argued in a July 17 letter to Judge Arun Subramanian that this practice, described as a “refusal to deal,” is common in the concert business and protected by Supreme Court precedent.
“As a general matter, the Sherman Act does not restrict the long recognized right of a [defendant] engaged in an entirely private business, freely to exercise his own independent discretion as to parties with whom he will deal,” Pfeiffer writes, quoting a 2004 ruling in a case brought by Verizon.
Trending on Billboard
Accordingly, Live Nation has no obligation “to extend a helping hand to new entrants” or help its rivals “survive or expand,” Pfeiffer notes, adding, “the unimpeachable freedom to refuse to deal with rivals (in all but the rarest circumstances, which are not even arguably present in this case) rests on bedrock antitrust principles.”
In the government’s 128-page complaint against Live Nation, attorneys with the DOJ’s antitrust division allege that Live Nation illegally “conditions artists’ access” to the 56 outdoor amphitheaters the company controls by forcing artists to chose “Live Nation as the promoter for concerts at its venues.”
Pfeiffer’s letter was born out of a June 27 pre-trial hearing in which Judge Subramanian invited Live Nation’s attorneys to file a letter to the court identifying issues that Live Nation had with the DOJ complaint “as opposed to advancing those arguments after” an amended complaint is filed,” Pfeiffer wrote. “Your Honor advised that doing so would provide Defendants ‘a good argument that those claims should be dismissed with prejudice’” if the government cannot overcome Live Nation’s arguments on a motion to dismiss.
Live Nation lawyers also want the antitrust claims filed by 30 states’ attorneys general alongside the DOJ dismissed, including 22 separate claims under their own state laws.
“These claims are threadbare and conclusory” Pfeiffer writes, noting that many of the state AGs merely repeat the DOJ’s allegations without specifically alleging “the elements of each state-law claim” or citing “what conduct allegedly violates the state laws in question.”
Pfeiffer also criticized the states for failing to detail their damage claims and argued that many of the state objections were barred by different state’s statute of limitations.
The DOJ has until Sept. 18 to respond to Live Nation’s letter.
