Legal News
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The Houston Police Department released its final report on the 2021 crowd crush tragedy at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival on Friday (July 28). The more than 1,200-page document details the Houston PD’s investigation into the tragedy, which left 10 people dead and hundreds more physically injured. The report arrives just a month after a Houston […]
More than nine years after members of the 1960s rock band The Turtles filed a series of groundbreaking lawsuits over the legal protections for so-called pre-1972 sound recordings, a federal judge has now dismissed their final case — a lawsuit against Pandora that he called the band’s “last case standing.”
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In a decision issued Wednesday, Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled that the Sirius XM-owned Pandora had not violated California state law by streaming the band’s songs, like the iconic 1967 cut “Happy Together,” without permission and without paying sound recording royalties.
In doing so, the judge recounted the decade-long story of how the two founders of the Turtles (legally Flo & Eddie, Inc.) filed such cases against music services in courts around the country — and how they had lost in every one of them.
“This case is one of many lawsuits brought by Flo & Eddie, seeking to hold internet and satellite radio services liable for the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of its sound recordings that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972,” the judge wrote. “Flo & Eddie’s action against Pandora is the last case standing.”
The Turtles first sued SiriusXM and Pandora in 2014, claiming that both companies had been illegally refusing to paying royalties for pre-1972 songs. That was a legal gray area at the time, since songs prior to that year had not been covered by federal sound recording copyrights. But the Turtles claimed pre-1972s could still be covered by state-level laws aimed at preventing misappropriation.
Initially, the band won a key ruling in California federal court, finding that California state law contained a so-called public performance right that would require services like Sirius and Pandora to start paying up. But then, slowly but surely, courts around the country — first the top court in New York, then the Florida Supreme Court, then a federal appeals court in California — ruled no such right existed.
“One after another, federal circuit courts and state Supreme Courts answered with a resounding ‘no’,” Judge Gutierrez wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.
In some ways, Wednesday’s ruling is anti-climactic. The larger issues raised by the Turtle’s pioneering lawsuits — whether the owners of a vast swath of American recorded music were entitled to a new revenue stream from services like SiriusXM and Pandora — were largely rendered moot by the passage of the federal Music Modernization Act in 2018. Among other major changes, that law required such royalties to be paid for pre-1972 records, ending the state-level ambiguity that drove the Turtles to sue.
But Judge Gutierrez had previously ruled that the MMA’s new requirements did not apply to pending lawsuits, meaning that the band still could have won a ruling forcing Pandora to hand over unpaid royalties from the years before the MMA’s enactment.
Barring a successful appeal, Wednesday’s ruling foreclosed that possibility: “The court grants Pandora’s motion for summary judgment. This order closes the case.”
In seeking to revive their lawsuit against Pandora, the Turtles argued that, even if no public performance right existed under California state law, the streamer had still violated their so-called reproduction right by illegally copying their music to make it available on the service. But those “repackaged” claims had also been rejected by the other courts, Judge Gutierrez wrote.
“Even if the Court would like to independently consider these claims, its ‘hands are tied,’” the judge wrote. “In the absence of an exclusive right to publicly perform its pre-1972 sound recordings, Flo & Eddie has no viable copyright claim against Pandora.”
A Mississippi woman has dropped her copyright lawsuit claiming that Taylor Swift stole aspects of a self-published book of poetry when she created a companion book for her album Lover, months after the star’s lawyers called it a case that “never should have been filed.”
Teresa La Dart sued Swift last year, claiming that “a number of creative elements” from her 2010 book (also called Lover) were copied into Swift’s book. But in a motion filed Thursday in Tennessee federal court, La Dart’s lawyer said she would permanently drop the case.
The sudden voluntary dismissal — which appears to be unilateral and not the product of any kind of settlement — came after Swift’s lawyers harshly criticized the lawsuit in their last filing. Demanding that case be dismissed, they said it was “legally and factually baseless” and “never should have been filed.”
Those arguments echoed what legal experts told Billboard were serious flaws in La Dart’s case. Lawyers said that she was essentially suing Swift over stock elements that could not be monopolized by any one author: “This person might as well sue anyone who’s ever written a diary or made a scrap book.”
Faced with such strong counter-arguments, dropping the case might have made monetary sense for La Dart. If she had continued to litigate the case and had ultimately lost, the judge may have ordered her to repay Swift’s legal bills — a sum that could have totaled tens of thousands of dollars.
La Dart sued Swift in August over the star’s Lover book — an extra bundled with the special edition of her Lover album that the New York Times called a “must-read companion” for Swifties. Released in four different versions, Swift’s book included a total of 120 pages of personal diary entries, accompanied by photos selected by the singer.
The lawsuit claimed that Swift had borrowed a number of visual elements from La Dart, including “pastel pinks and blues” and an image of the author “photographed in a downward pose.” She also claimed a copyright to the book’s overall format, including “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components” and “interspersed photographs and writings.”
Just one problem: In their response in February, Swift’s lawyers said those elements were nothing more than commonplace features of almost any book, meaning they fall well short of being unique enough to qualify for copyright protection.
“This is a lawsuit that never should have been filed,” attorney Doug Baldridge wrote for the superstar. “These allegedly-infringing elements, each a generic design format, are not subject to copyright protection. Thus, defendants could not possibly have infringed plaintiff’s copyright.”
That motion to dismiss the case remained pending when La Dart dropped the case on Thursday. Baldridge did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
La Dart’s attorney William S. Parks did not immediately return a request for comment. But after Swift’s response in February, he defended bringing the case: “Miss La Dart has questions that will hopefully and eventually be answered regarding her perceived similarities between the two works,” Parks said at the time. “Unfortunately, she felt it necessary to bring this suit in order to possibly obtain such answers. We will see how the judge decides at this point.”
DJ John Summit publicly apologized Tuesday (July 25) for “all the drama” that he “stirred up” last week in a legal dispute with a smaller company over the name of his Off the Grid record label, vowing to change his company’s name to resolve the disagreement.
Early last week, Summit took to Twitter to blast the organizers of a rival “Off the Grid” music event, claiming they had “sued” him and were demanding “7+ figures” over their identical names. Summit, an electronic music A-lister who’s worked with Kaskade, Diplo and others, said at the time that it “f—ing sucks when ppl want to screw u over.”
But after deleting those tweets and going silent over the weekend, Summit made an about-face on Tuesday. In a new tweet, he said he had “acted out of emotion” in last week’s rant and wanted to “truly apologize” to the rival Off The Grid group.
“I’ve been talking w the OTG campout team and apologized to them directly but i also wanted to do so publicly,” Summit wrote. “They’ve agreed to stop pursuing legal action & my team and i are working on a rebrand. in the meantime, to all my fans, please stop sending negative messages to OTG campout. i was wrong in condoning that behavior in any way.”
Summit announced the launch of Off The Grid in March 2022, tweeting that he was “so stoked” to announce his own imprint where there would be “nothing off limits.” The label has since released music by artists including Mau P, Danny Avila and Summit himself, and has hosted live events, including a camping event in Tennessee this past April.
Just one problem: A music promoter named Mikey Made Cromie had already been using the name Off The Grid since 2015 for his own dance music events, including a flagship three-day “campout” that draws as many as 1,000 fans.
In June, attorneys for Cromie sent a cease and desist letter to Summit over the name of his new label. They warned that Cromie claimed Off The Grid as an exclusive trademark and that Summit’s use of an identical name for a company that sells the exact same genre of music would clearly infringe it.
It was that letter that prompted Summit’s outburst on social media last week. “Getting sued for trademark over my ‘off the grid’ label name by a small promoter even tho it’s a common phrase and i built up this brand 100% myself,” Summit wrote at the time. “i REFUSE to get threatened for 7+ figures over a LABEL NAME.”
Cromie, meanwhile, denied that a lawsuit had been filed and said he had never made a demand for seven figures, but confirmed that he had sent the cease and desist letter and wanted Summit to stop using the name. In an email to Billboard last week, Cromie said that Summit’s team “knew about us the whole time and thought we were so small of a company that they could use the name without any recourse.”
In Tuesday’s new tweet, Summit suggested that some kind of formal settlement had been reached, saying he would be changing his name and Cromie’s company would stop pursuing any legal action. But he offered no additional details, like when the name would be changed or whether any money had changed hands.
“All we want now is for both our communities to come together and be able to dance as one,” Summit wrote in his tweet. “i def learned my lesson from this and from here on out, i’m going to focus my attention in a positive light so we can get back to releasing music and throwing fun parties.”
Cromie did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Billboard on Tuesday. But he seemed to confirm the settlement on his Facebook page: Above a giant image of a peace sign, he wrote simply: “Peace is always the answer!”
Organizers of the Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, tell Billboard that the controversy surrounding The 1975’s performance at the festival, during which lead singer Matty Healy insulted the government and kissed a bandmate on stage, has left the festival in financial ruin and could limit future concerts in the country for years to come.
The claim is the latest in the fallout from Healy’s protest and the heavy-handed decision by the country’s communications and digital ministry to cancel the remainder of the festival while also banning Healy from playing in the country in the future. Malaysia places very restrictive rules on foreign artists performing in the country, and Healy’s manager “had acknowledged in writing that Matt Healy would adhere to all local guidelines and regulations” prior to his performance Friday, says Wan Alman, whose company, Future Sound Asia, has promoted the festival for more than 10 years. Alman adds that “artists are briefed on the guidelines before the event.”
Alman confirmed that Future Sound Asia is considering pursuing legal action against the band, as the cancellation led to heavy losses for the promoter. The company likely already paid out artist deposits for the entire festival and might soon be required to issue refunds to fans, depending on an outcome of an investigation by the Malaysian government. Festival organizers might be able to make a legal claim against the band, explained Tim Epstein, a leading attorney for independent festivals in North America, depending on the language of the contract between the band and the promoter.
Specifically, Epstein said he would look to see how the contract deals with potential instances of unlawful behavior and what, if any, language dealt with local guidelines and regulations around speech. He said he would also want to confirm where the talent agreement designated that legal disputes be heard; most contracts defer disputes to U.S. courts. Finally, Epstein said the festival’s event cancellation policy could offset any damages, depending on the language in the policy. While government intervention is typically covered under a policy’s “force majeure” language, the Good Vibes Festival’s specific policy might include other provisions that make collecting difficult.
The 1975 incident has cast a negative light on Malaysia — and documents obtained by Billboard show that foreign artists playing in the country must agree to guidelines that include a ban on men wearing shorts on stage, prohibitions on women “wearing clothes that expose the chest area or that are too high above the knees” and strict rules prohibiting “entertaining or mingling with the audience at any time.”
In order to invite foreign artists into the country, promoters must complete the Communication and Digital Ministry’s Application for Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes — a 40-page document outlining how artists are allowed to dress on stage and what they aren’t allowed to say about the government.
According to Amnesty International, in Malaysia it is illegal to protest the government, dress in drag or possess films or movies deemed to have LGBTQ+ elements. Much of the country’s criminal code is enforced through imprisonment with access to a court hearing, public flogging and, up until last year, the death penalty, which is currently banned under moratorium.
Neither The 1975’s agent, Matt Baum with Primary Talent — which represents the band in Asia — nor its manager, Jamie Osborne, would comment for this article.
An agent familiar with international bookings who did not want to speak on the record tells Billboard that the number of countries run by repressive regimes that host concerts is still relatively small, and it’s typically the promoter’s job to explain the rules to the band booked for a show.
That can be a double-edged sword, the agent explains, noting that the festival promoter “also may not want to be overly open about it for fear of discouraging people from playing.”
In many cases, the promoter does their best to balance the artist’s own right to expression while also being careful not to anger the host government.
“The 1975 shouldn’t have played there if they feel so strongly but I understand how they got to where they are,” the agent said.
Since opening the country to concerts by foreign artists in 2000, the Malaysian government has required visitors to adhere to a fairly restrictive code of conduct. Among other things, it requires modest attire and a ban on “provocative acts” like kissing a member of the opposite sex in front of a live audience.
The rules were updated in March by Malaysia’s communications and digital minister, Fahmi Fadzil, to include bans on cross-dressing on stage and “criticizing any government agency charged with upholding the law.”
Also banned under the guidelines are women’s clothes with “high slits, and clothes that are too tight or figure-hugging,” as well as a general ban on “performing in a wild manner, provocatively and displaying actions that are contrary to the performance code of ethics.” Other no-nos include “performing actions or making utterances that may be deemed as seditious” and “entertaining or mingling with the audience at any time.”
While some LGBTQ+ activists accused Healy of cynically protesting homophobia in the country for attention, others said it’s the government’s heavy-handed decision to cancel the festival over a same-sex kiss that deserves condemnation.
The controversy over LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression in Malaysia won’t likely go away any time soon. Coldplay is set to perform at the country’s Bukit Jalil National Stadium in November for a show promoted by Live Nation, which is also expected to produce a concert for the group Lany in the country in August.
Video game giant Activision is suing a prominent TikTok music critic over a viral audio clip that he created, claiming he is unfairly demanding that some social media users pay him “extortionate” settlements after they re-use the heavily-memed clip.
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In a complaint filed Monday in California federal court, Activision accused Anthony Fantano of “misusing” intellectual property laws by threatening to “selectively” sue TikTokers who use “enough slices!” — a popular audio clip that originated with a video Fantano first posted in 2021.
Activision, which says it received such a threat after it used the clip in a promotion for its Crash Bandicoot game franchise, claims that Fantano intentionally made the clip available through TikTok’s audio library — meaning he cannot now sue the hundreds of thousands of users that chose to use it.
“This dispute is a textbook example of how intellectual property law can be misused by individuals to leverage unfair cash payments,” Activision’s lawyers wrote. “Fantano was very happy to receive the benefit of the public use of the Slices Video. It was only after he identified a financial opportunity — namely, receiving unjustified settlement payments — that he suddenly decided that his consent was limited.”
“The law does not permit, and the court should not countenance, such overt gamesmanship,” Activision’s lawyers wrote.
Fantano, a popular internet creator who reviews music on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms, first uploaded the “slices” video in 2021. The clip — showing Fantano getting aggravated as a pizza is cut into increasingly smaller slices before screaming, “It’s enough slices!” — has garnered tens of millions of views. In the two years since, the audio has become internet shorthand for a situation that starts out well but eventually goes too far.
In its lawsuit, Activision says there’s an obvious reason why the clip was used so widely: Fantano “deliberately and knowingly” added the audio to TikTok’s library, making it easily available for millions of other users to incorporate into their own videos. They say he even opted into the “Commercial Sounds” library, which means he agreed his clip could be legally used in promotional videos for brands.
The company says it was surprised, then, when it received a legal threat from Fantano after it used “enough slices” in a TikTok video depicting the creation of custom Crash Bandicoot sneakers. He allegedly told the gaming giant the use of the clip not only used his name-and-likeness rights without permission, but also violated federal trademark laws by suggesting he had endorsed the company’s games.
Activision says it agreed to pull the clip down, but that Fantano demanded the company “eitherimmediately pay him substantial monetary damages or be prepared to defend a lawsuit.” The exact amount of money demanded was not included in the lawsuit, but Activision says Fantano asked for a “six-figure sum” and said that other companies had “paid a similar sum in order to avoid the expense of litigation.”
Rather than doing so, Activision responded by filing Monday’s lawsuit, which is aimed at proving the company and other TikTok users owe Fantano nothing for the use of his clip.
“With Fantano’s approval and encouragement, hundreds of thousands of TikTok users have incorporated the Slices Audio into their own videos over the past two years,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “But now … Fantano has embarked on a scheme whereby he selectively threatens to sue certain users of the Slices Audio unless they pay him extortionate amounts of money for their alleged use.”
Activision is seeking a so-called “declaratory” ruling that Fantano cannot sue TikTok users over the clip, as well as an order forcing him to repay the company’s legal bills.
Fantano did not immediately return a request for comment through his website.
Jessica Simpson’s company is suing the owner of a small online apparel retailer called “Jessica’s Everything Shop,” claiming the woman rejected a settlement that would have allowed both Jessicas to “live and let live” and instead tried to win a cash payout.
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In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for the singer’s With You LLC say Simpson and her apparel collection have “always coexisted” with other women named Jessica — specifically name-dropping Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel and many other famous women with that name.
But Simpson’s lawyers say that Jessica Tirado and her “Everything Shop” have been improperly trying to secure their own exclusive trademark on “Jessica” without a surname — a step they say would cause “consumer confusion” and allow Tirado to unfairly sue Simpson over her longstanding use of the name.
When they reached out to resolve the problem without litigation, Simpson’s lawyers say they were met with an unreasonable demand for a “monetary payment to Ms. Tirado.”
“[With You] has a policy that it does not make any such payments, inasmuch as doing so invites ‘troll plaintiff’s attorneys’ to file claims against WY, believing that WY will, in each instance, pay monies,” Simpsons lawyers wrote in their Thursday (July 20) lawsuit.
Tirado’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday. A lawyer for With You LLC (a holding that owns Simpson’s trademarks and other intellectual property) also did not return a request for comment.
Simpson, 43, initially launched The Jessica Simpson Collection in 2005 with a partnership with shoe designer Vince Camuto, eventually growing into a company with a reported $1 billion in revenue by 2014. In 2021, after part-owner Sequential Brands Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Simpson spent $65 million to win back complete control of the brand.
Tirado’s website, meanwhile, currently hosts a store featuring “create your own” t-shirts with custom designs. One features an image of from the film Hocus Pocus with the text “Turns Out I’m 100% That Witch;” another features an image of Santa Claus with the text “Bitch Better Have My Cookies.”
In last week’s lawsuit, Simpson’s lawyers say they first flagged Tirado after she applied in 2021 at the federal trademark office to register the full name of her brand — “Jessica’s Everything Shop *JES*” — as a trademark for an online apparel store. But they say they tried, at first, to hash things out peacefully.
“Before taking any action with respect to Ms. Tirado’s trademark application, WY sought to work out a ‘live and let live’ … arrangement that would allow Ms. Tirado to proceed with her exploitation of her name ‘Jessica Tirado’ in a way that would never impede WY’s activities,” the lawyers for Simpson’s company write.
After such talks were unsuccessful, Simpson’s company filed a formal opposition at the trademark office, asking the agency to deny the application. In a copy of that filing obtained by Billboard, lawyers for Simpson’s company warned that consumers were likely to confuse the two “Jessica” trademarks.
In last week’s lawsuit, Simpson’s lawyers said that a lawyer for Tirado then responded to that opposition filing with a demand of his own.
“Ultimately, Ms. Tirado engaged legal counsel to represent her in the opposition, who responded and indicated that Ms. Tirado was willing to settle the matter with WY, but only if WY was willing to make a monetary payment,” Simpson’s lawyers wrote. “When Ms. Tirado’s counsel made clear that the matter would not settle absent a payment, and he began to run up legal costs … WY was left with no alternative but to protect its position by filing this lawsuit.”
Thursday’s lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages, as well as an injunction forcing Tirado to “phase out” her use of the “Jessica’s Everything Shop” name over the course of three months.
An Atlanta judge on Friday once again refused to release Young Thug from jail while he awaits trial in a sweeping RICO case against alleged gang members, denying him bond for a fourth time over fears of witness intimidation.
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At a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court, Judge Ural Glanville cited claims by prosecutors that “recent conversations” with witnesses in the case suggested that the superstar rapper (real name Jeffery Williams) was “asking for permission to harm others.”
“The court finds that would pose a significant risk to the community,” Judge Glanville said. “For that reason I’m going to continue to deny bond at this time. That’s my ruling.”
Earlier in the hearing, Thug’s attorney Brian Steel had argued that his client posed no such risk, and that the rapper’s pre-trial incarceration – for 14 months and counting – were causing serious harm to his health, including exacerbating a kidney condition with poor nutrition. At one point, he likened Thug’s stay in jail to a form of “torture.”
Among other alleged evidence, prosecutors claimed that a person close to Thug told police the rapper had messaged her “Snitch hoes get murked. Them and their kids.” Thug’s lawyers strongly disputed the existence of that text, and prosecutors later clarified that it had been sent in 2010.
In his closing plea to Judge Glanville, Steel sharply criticized the claims made by prosecutors to keep the rapper behind bars.
“Your honor, you are being given information that is not appropriate,” Steel said. “I would not come before the court, for a third time. Mr. Williams can have a bond with whatever conditions the court needs. It will just be the right thing to do under law.”
But Judge Glanville was unswayed, saying the claim of potential witness intimidation “still troubles the court.”
Such denials of bond are a loss for any criminal defendant, but they have loomed particularly large in the YSL case in recent months, as the start of the actual trial has repeatedly been delayed.
The trial technically started in January, but after six months of attempting to pick a jury that will decide the case, not one single juror has yet to be chosen as of Friday. The delay has largely been driven by the fact that the massive case, dealing with years of allegations and many separate defendants, is expected to run well into next year. Many prospective jurors have successfully argued that they cannot afford to halt their lives for that long, citing jobs, childcare commitments and health problems.
Young Thug was indicted in May 2022, along with dozens of others, on accusations that his YSL was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta street gang called “Young Slime Life.” Prosecutors claim members of YSL committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
The case is built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. Such laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up many members of an alleged criminal conspiracy based on many smaller acts that aren’t directly related.
The rapper Gunna was also charged in the original indictment, but he agreed in December to plead guilty to the single charge he was facing. At the time, Gunna said he was not cooperating with prosecutors, but he acknowledged in court that YSL was both “a music label and a gang.”
Thug, who continues to strongly deny the charges he’s facing, has repeatedly sought to be released on bond ahead of trial. But such release has been repeatedly denied, largely because prosecutors have warned the judge that he might threaten witnesses or otherwise obstruct the case.
In April, Thug’s attorney again demanded that his client be released from jail. Steel argued that his client was “innocent of all charges” and that he should not be left “languishing in county jail” while the case continued to drag on.
“Conditions can be set to ensure that Mr. Williams comes back to court when required to do so, and due to the extended nature of this trial, Mr. Williams respectfully requests this Honorable Court reconsider its position on bond,” Steel wrote at the time.
In June, Dylan Bourne, who manages JELEEL! and Dwellers, opened Instagram to find his inbox flooded with messages. Earlier that day, he had posted an exasperated friend’s observation about the habits of some music industry attorneys: “Seems like the standard with all these lawyers is [to] sign a million things you can’t possibly time manage.” Many of Bourne’s followers were quietly harboring the same frustration, and they started sending him their own stories of long delays and extended silences.
“I just had this feeling that if both myself and another respected peer were both experiencing these same difficulties, we couldn’t be alone, and I was curious to hear other people’s perspectives on the matter,” Bourne tells Billboard. “I could have never imagined the volume of responses that came in from fellow managers, artists, producers, and even lawyers.”
While attorneys operate almost entirely behind the scenes in the music industry, they wield a significant amount of power. Artists require a lawyer before they can sign a record deal, and “the lawyer controls that conversation in most cases,” explains one senior label executive. As a result, “Lawyers are the center of A&R.”
With great power comes great responsibility. But “there is no scrutiny on lawyers,” says one artist manager who requested anonymity to speak freely. “There’s no way to hold them accountable other than firing them.”
Jason Berger, a partner at Lewis Brisbois, was among those who reached out to Bourne after the post. “He’s right,” Berger says. “Some lawyers abuse that position because of the money that can be made when you’re in such a unique space.”
“This is a problem with lawyers that I’ve observed since I started practicing,” adds Gandhar Savur, founder of Savur Law. “I sometimes don’t get a response from an opposing lawyer for months, and these lawyers somehow flourish professionally while routinely not responding to people or getting transactions closed. It’s something that reflects poorly on our profession as a whole.”
Other attorneys bristled at the critique. “Often, lawyers will be blamed for the shortcomings of incompetent managers,” one attorney says. “Even some managers that are very prominent in the business have no idea what they’re doing” — and they bog down lawyers with requests that should be handled by an accountant or a label, the attorney continues, preventing them from focusing on their actual jobs.
“Lawyers aren’t just like, ‘We’re gonna cash these checks and screw our clients because we don’t care,’” adds Zach Bohlender, a former music attorney who left the profession to co-found Charta, a company that aims to save lawyers time by distilling the process of drawing up side-artist and producer agreements. “We feel that stress. It’s really tough mentally.”
The simmering tension between music-industry factions is partially a symptom of a shift in the broader ecosystem. “The blame shouldn’t all fall on [lawyers’] shoulders,” Bourne acknowledges. “Every role has been affected by the oversaturation our market is experiencing.”
Executives on both sides of the debate agree that there are more artists than ever before, and today’s music lawyers have more to do than their predecessors. “The workload of an artist attorney has definitely increased as music-making has become more collaborative,” says Adam Zia, founding partner of the Zia Firm. “There used to be a few producers for every album; now there might be 20 or 30 different writers and producers.” And a contract has to be drawn up and negotiated for each one of those collaborators.
“When we started going to five agreements per song, we should have taken them down from 35 pages to three pages,” says Josh Pothier, director of Kingsway Music Library, a collection of original compositions created by the producer Ging (formerly known as Frank Dukes) for sampling purposes.
“You look through those agreements, and there are still B-side protections that haven’t been necessary since we were pressing 7-inch singles,” Pothier continues. “We had a real opportunity to restructure this business when it went digital. We didn’t take it, and now we’re really struggling.”
Not only does each contemporary release tend to come laden with more paperwork, there are also simply more releases than there used to be. “Now artists are terrified that if they don’t put out music constantly, people are just going to forget them,” Bohlender explains.
But many of the managers and lawyers who spoke for this story also pointed out that lawyers are “incentivized” to take on a lot of clients since most of them operate on a 5% commission for the deals they shepherd across the finish line. “We represent developing acts for basically nothing, and there’s a venture component — you represent X number of artists, and hopefully a couple end up making it and they make everything worthwhile from a financial standpoint,” says the attorney who requested anonymity. But this can frustrate managers who see their lawyers single-mindedly chasing “after big money deals and just leaving all the smaller shit to the side,” as Pothier puts it.
More artists releasing more music with more paperwork, combined with a business model that encourages volume, means that “everybody’s completely jammed,” according to Lucas Keller, founder and president of Milk & Honey. Jammed to the point where attorneys’ response time is almost a joke around the music industry.
“A guy called me the other day and said, ‘I want to sack my lawyer — he takes too long on agreements, two months sometimes,’” Keller recalls. While his friend was annoyed, the Milk & Honey boss thought two months was actually a pretty decent turnaround time relative to some of the lags he’s seen. “The guy sounds great!” he quipped. “We should send him more business!”
Lawyers are hardly the only music industry operators accused of stretching themselves thin — the major labels have been charged with doing the same thing. However, “When a label is over-signing stuff, they’re paying money for it, and the artist is making a judgment call: ‘There’s a very real possibility that I could be shelved or get lost in the sauce,’” says Matt Buser, founder of Buser Legal. In contrast, he notes, “When you sign up with an attorney, you might even be paying the attorney a retainer. The consideration flow is different.”
And unlike labels, lawyers also have certain duties to their clients, according to Stephen Gillers, who teaches ethics at New York University School of Law. Under the court’s rules of professional conduct, “you can’t take on more clients than you can competently handle,” Gillers says. (He also notes that “you cannot take on a client in a matter if the matter is adverse to another client,” another problem in the music industry.)
What can be done to both help artists who need legal counsel and ease the burden on their lawyers? “We could do a lot better at streamlining a lawyer’s job by making a global template for agreements,” Pothier says. Several managers also believe that artificial intelligence might one day take over some of the time-consuming contract-drafting duties.
Bohlender is attempting to create his own tech solution with Charta. “How do we create a more efficient way to draft contracts?” he asks. His platform aims to distill producer and side-artist agreements to a few key provisions that can be quickly negotiated and then slotted into standardized contracts.
But for now, Bohlender notes, solutions are scarce: “No one’s winning.”
A home that Las Vegas police searched this week in connection with the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur is tied to a man long known to investigators, whose nephew had emerged as a suspect shortly after the rapper’s killing.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed it served a search warrant Monday in the neighboring city of Henderson. But the department hasn’t released other details, including whether they expect to make an arrest for the first time in the slaying of the rapper nearly 30 years ago.
Public records, including voting records, link the property to the wife of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a self-described “gangster” and the uncle of Orlando Anderson, one of Shakur’s known rivals who authorities have long suspected in the rapper’s death. Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s killing at the time, and died two years later in an unrelated gang shooting in Compton, California.
A copy of the warrant obtained Thursday by The Associated Press shows detectives collected multiple computers, a cellular telephone, “documentary documents,” a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ 2019 memoir, ”Compton Street Legend.”
Residents of a suburban small Henderson neighborhood — nestled in the foothills of the city about 20 miles southeast of the Las Vegas Strip — said they saw officers detain two people outside the home while investigators searched the one-story property.
“There were cruisers and SWAT vehicles. They had lights shining on the house,” said Don Sansouci, 61, who had just gone to bed with his wife when a swirl of blue and red police lights stirred them awake sometime after 9 p.m.
Sansouci said he watched from the sidewalk Monday night as a man and a woman stepped outside of a house surrounded by police, place their hands behind their heads and slowly walk backwards toward the officers.
The case is being presented to a grand jury in Las Vegas, according to a person with direct knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly. The timing and results of those proceedings was unclear, and the person did not identify the two people whom police encountered at the house.
The person confirmed that investigators seized computers, published materials and photos, along with copies of Davis’ 2019 memoir titled “Compton Street Legend.”
Sansouci said he and his wife don’t know the people who live in the home. He described the area as “a nice, quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood” where most residents keep to themselves.
It was not immediately known if Davis has a lawyer who can comment on his behalf, and messages left for Davis and his wife, Paula Clemons, weren’t returned. Records show the two were married in Clark County, Nevada, in 2005.
News of the search breathed new life into Shakur’s long-unsolved killing, which has been surrounded by conspiracy theories. There have never been any arrests, yet attention on the case has endured for decades.
Shakur’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.
On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was riding in a black BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight in a convoy of about 10 cars. They were waiting at a red light a block from the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died days later.
The shooting unfolded shortly after a casino brawl earlier in the evening involving Anderson, Shakur and their associates.
There were many witnesses, but the investigation quickly stalled, in part because those witnesses refused to cooperate, Las Vegas police said in the past.
That silence broke, to a point, in 2018, when Davis — saying he was ready to speak publicly after a cancer diagnosis — admitted to being in the front seat of the Cadillac. In an interview for a BET show, he implicated his nephew in the shooting, saying Anderson was one of two people in the backseat.
Davis said the shots were fired from the back of the car, though he stopped short of naming the shooter, saying he had to abide by the “code of the streets.”
But in his memoir, Davis said he shared what he knew nearly a decade earlier in closed-door meetings with federal and local authorities who were investigating the possibility that Shakur’s slaying was linked to the March 1997 drive-by shooting of his rap rival, the Notorious B.I.G.
“They offered to let me go for running a “criminal enterprise” and numerous alleged murders for the truth about the Tupac and Biggie murders,” Davis said in his book. “They promised they would shred the indictment and stop the grand jury if I helped them out.”
At the time of their deaths, both rappers were involved in an infamous East Coast-West Coast rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s. The feud was ignited after Shakur was seriously wounded in another shooting during a robbery in the lobby of a midtown Manhattan hotel.
Shakur openly accused B.I.G. and Sean “Diddy” Combs of having prior knowledge of the shooting, which both vehemently denied. It sparked a serious divide within the hip-hop community and fans.
Davis wrote that he “went ahead and started answering their questions about the events leading up to Tupac getting shot.”
“I sang because they promised I would not be prosecuted,” he said, adding that he thought they were lying about the deal. “But they kept their word and stopped the indictment, tore up the whole case. Nobody went to jail.”
It’s unclear if Davis has been living in the home Las Vegas police searched this week and whether he was present when officers descended on the property. Las Vegas court records show there has been an active warrant out for his arrest since July 2022, when he failed to appear in court on a drug charge.