Legal
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Jay-Z wants to sell his stake in D’Usse Cognac, and says that Bacardi – which owns the other half of the business – is legally required to buy it. But in a new lawsuit, the superstar claims the liquor giant is “lowballing” and “stonewalling” him to get a cheaper price.
In a complaint filed in Delaware court, Jay-Z’s SCLiquor LLC says that it exercised a contractual option to sell its 50 percent stake in D’Usse to Empire Investments, the Bacardi unit that owns the other half and runs the company’s day-to-day operations. Hov’s company claims the move came after years of “mismanagement and underperformance” by Bacardi.
But according to the lawsuit, which was made public on Thursday (Oct. 20), Bacardi and Empire responded to the move not by following the rules, but by refusing to hand over key information and scheming to “artificially depress” the price it would pay.
“Empire sought to stall and stonewall SC’s efforts in an attempt to wrest SC’s 50% membership interest in D’Usse at a cheaper price by, among other things, refusing to provide necessary information,” SCLiquor’s lawyers wrote.
According to the lawsuit, SCLiquor holds a so-called “put option” on D’Usse’s corporate entity, a legal mechanism that, when triggered, requires Bacardi to buy out Jay-Z’s half of the business. The two sides are supposed to negotiate in “good faith,” exchange information and agree on a fair price.
But Jay-Z’s lawyers say that when they exercised the put option last year, Empire and Bacardi did anything but operate in good faith.
“Instead, Empire has abused its day-to-day control of D’Usse to deprive SC of information necessary to … assess D’Usse’s value,” SCLiquor’s lawyers wrote. “Empire has done so by engaging in an apparent shell-game with its parent company Bacardi.”
They say the move to sell off Hov’s stake came amid “growing concern” about how Empire was running the company, including its “blatant conflict of interest” with Bacardi. Jay-Z’s lawyers say Empire has relied on Bacardi to provide key services, even though the parent company has had repeated failures that hurt D’Usse, including supply chain failures and an unwillingness to change prices.
In its current form, the lawsuit is only seeking to force Empire to turn over more information about D’Usse. But the complaint says that information will also be used to “investigate potential future actions for damages.”
A rep for Bacardi did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawsuit.
A computer hacker who stole unreleased songs from British pop star Ed Sheeran and American rap artist Lil Uzi Vert has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, U.K. prosecutors said Friday.
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Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich in southern England, hacked the artists’ cloud-based accounts and sold their songs on the dark web in exchange for cryptocurrency. City of London Police, which investigated the case, said Kwiatkowski made 131,000 pounds ($147,000) on the transactions.
“Kwiatkowski had complete disregard for the musicians’ creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent loss of earnings,” said Joanne Jakymec of the Crown Prosecution Service. “He selfishly stole their music to make money for himself.”
In August, Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, including 14 copyright offenses and three counts of computer misuse. He was sentenced Friday (Oct. 21) in Ipswich Crown Court.
City of London Police worked with authorities in the United States to investigate the case after the management companies of several musicians reported that an individual, known online as Spirdark, had gained access to their clients’ cloud-based accounts and was selling their content.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation in 2019, and linked the email address used for Spirdark’s cryptocurrency account to Kwiatkowski. It then identified the IP address of the device used to hack one of the accounts as his home address.
After further investigation, Kwiatkowski was arrested by the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit in September 2019.
“Cybercrime knows no borders, and this individual executed a complex scheme to steal unreleased music in order to line his own pockets,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L Bragg Jr. said.
Travis Scott, Live Nation and other organizers of last year’s deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston appear to have reached their first settlements with victims in the sprawling litigation over the disaster.
Nearly a year after a crowd-crush during Scott’s Nov. 5 performance left 10 dead and hundreds injured, attorneys for the family of Axel Acosta, a 21-year-old killed in the incident, confirmed Thursday that they had reached a settlement with the organizers. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“Victim Axel Acosta was a beloved son, brother, and student,” said Tony Buzbee, who also represents scores of other victims. “He was kind and loving. He is greatly missed. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
Separately, Houston’s ABC affiliate reported late Wednesday that the family of Brianna Rodriguez, a 16-year-old who died at Astroworld, had also settled their claims. Neither settlement is yet posted to the court’s public docket.
Live Nation and a rep for Scott did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
The agreements represent two of the first known settlements in the sprawling litigation over the Astroworld disaster, in which thousands of victims are seeking billions of dollars in damages from Live Nation, Scott and others. The lawsuits, consolidated before a single judge earlier this year, claim the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, resulting in one of the deadliest concert disasters in history.
The defendants, which also include venue manager ASM Global and the municipal Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation, strongly deny the allegations and have assembled a formidable team of lawyers to fight the litigation.
According to a legal filing in May, more than 4,900 people have filed legal claims stating they were injured in some capacity at Astroworld. In addition to the 10 people who died, 732 claims have been filed by people who needed “extensive medical treatment” and 1,649 who needed less extensive care. Another 2,540 were listed as “other,” meaning the extent of their injuries was still being reviewed. It’s unclear how many people claim physical harm versus mental and emotional harm, like post-traumatic stress.
The individual settlements announced this week are likely only a precursor to a larger deal. Similar litigation over previous concert disasters, like the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 60 dead or the 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100, were ultimately resolved with large settlements covering hundreds of victims.
Cardi B didn’t hold back when she took the witness stand Wednesday (Oct. 19) in a lawsuit claiming her sexually-suggestive album cover left a man “humiliated,” repeatedly sparring with an opposing attorney, requesting “receipts” and claiming her accuser is “harassing” her in hopes of scoring a settlement.
The rapper’s testimony came in an unusual case filed by Kevin Brophy, a California man who claims parts of his back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped onto the cover of Cardi’s 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 to make it look like he was performing oral sex on the now-superstar.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi and Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, battled repeatedly. At two different points during their sparring, the judge dismissed the jurors from the courtroom to calm the bickering down. On the second dismissal, things got so heated that the judge told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line,” and even threatened to declare a mistrial after jurors had left the courtroom.
Earlier in the day, Brophy’s attorneys said they had sent the star a cease-and-desist seeking to have the image removed – prompting Cardi to fire back that the case was really about money, not changes to an album cover.
“This is not about taking anything down. Y’all have been harassing me for $5 million,” the star said to Cappello. Cardi later noted that the mixtape did not even earn that much, and her cut was even less.
The star also took exception to the suggestion that Brophy’s image on the cover had somehow contributed to her meteoric success over the past decade – a key part of his legal case against her. She said she had been “working my ass off [for] two kids” and that it’s “really insulting to me as a woman that a man is claiming responsibility.”
Released in 2016, the cover image of Gangsta Bitch certainly raised eyebrows. In it, the then-rising star is seen taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.
Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover. He says Cardi and others violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.”
Cardi’s legal team has argued those accusations are “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown” – and that Brophy is just suing her in an effort to “cash in the legal equivalent of a lotto ticket.” Her legal team says nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back, and that he has little proof anyone did.
The trial kicked off on Tuesday, when Brophy testified that Cardi’s “raunchy” image had caused severe stress on his life. He called it a “complete slap in the face” that had caused him “hurt and shame.”
But at Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi pointed out from the witness stand that the model in the image was “a Black man that’s fit” who has hair. Brophy is white with a shaved head.
“It’s not Mr. Brophy’s back. It doesn’t look like Mr. Brophy at all,” she told Cappello. “There has been not one receipt he has provided in the court claiming, ‘Hey, that’s you on Cardi’s mixtape.’”
Wednesday’s proceedings also featured testimony by Brophy himself and his wife, as well as Cardi’s former manager Klenord “Shaft” Raphael. Testimony will continue on Thursday, with a verdict expected on Friday or Monday.re
Miley Cyrus has settled a copyright lawsuit a month after she was sued for posting a paparazzi photo of herself to Instagram, according to court documents filed Wednesday (Oct. 18) and obtained by Billboard.
In the original complaint, filed on Sept. 12 in Los Angeles federal court, photographer Robert Barbera claimed that Cyrus reposted his 2020 image of her without a license or permission to do so. In the snap, the “Midnight Sky” singer is seen waving to fans as she exits a building.
In his complaint, Barbera claimed Cyrus has an “immense presence” due to her millions of followers on Instagram, and that posting the image “crippled if not destroyed” his ability to make money licensing it.
According to court documents, the lawsuit was subsequently dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning Barbera cannot refile the same claim again in that court.
The lawsuit against Cyrus is not the first Barbera has filed. The New York-based photographer previously filed copyright complaints against Ariana Grande in May 2019 and January 2020, and Justin Bieber in October 2019, though both cases were later settled on confidential terms. Earlier this summer, he filed another lawsuit against Dua Lipa that at the time of publication is still pending in court.
Though these cases may seem unfair, the law is on the side of photographers like Barbera, as they own the copyrights to the images that they take — and using those photos without a license constitutes infringement. Simply appearing in an image does not give a celebrity co-ownership of it, nor does it give them a right to repost it for free.
Had the court found that Cyrus had infringed Barbera’s copyright, the singer could have faced damages totaling as much as $150,000. For that reason, most celebrities accused of infringement by photographers opt to settle out of court, likely for a smaller sum, in order to avoid the time and expense that come with continued litigation. Though the terms of these settlement deals are nearly always private, for a single photo, amounts likely range in the tens of thousands of dollars.
R. Kelly’s former business manager asked a federal judge to award him $850,000 in attorneys fees after a jury acquitted him during the same trial in Chicago at which the R&B singer was convicted of child pornography charges.
Derrel McDavid’s attorney wrote that deserves to recoup the legal fees after enduring a “frivolous, vexatious and bad faith prosecution over which he prevailed.” Attorney Beau Brindley filed the 18-page request with U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber late Monday (Oct. 17), the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
A federal jury last month convicted Kelly of producing child pornography and enticing minor girls for sex, but found Kelly and McDavid not guilty of conspiring to rig a 2008 trial in which Kelly was acquitted on state child pornography charges. A third co-defendant, Milton Brown, was acquitted of receiving child pornography.
Such motions are exceedingly rare and do not often succeed, in large part because defendants who are acquitted of criminal charges do not have a right to compensation. In his motion, Brindley said prosecutors knew the testimony of two key witnesses was “necessarily incoherent.”
“This is, by definition, a reckless disregard for the truth, which constitutes a frivolous and vexatious position by the government,” he wrote. “This entitles Mr. McDavid to reasonable attorney’s fees.”
During the trial, prosecutors maintained there was compelling evidence that McDavid was aware that Kelly was producing child pornography and that he sought for years to conceal evidence of what Kelly was doing.
Brindley said McDavid still owes $600,000 in legal fees and “must now liquidate real property and other assets in an attempt to pay.” Brindley also wrote that he and others spent at least 1,220 hours working on the case and that adds up to about $65,000 less than what a “reasonable market rate” of $750 an hour would cost a client.
Kelly has not yet been sentenced in the Chicago federal case, but he was sentenced earlier this year to 30 years in prison for a federal conviction in New York on racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly column about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings, and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Cardi B goes to trial in a weird case over a bawdy album cover, Gunna is again refused bond in Atlanta, Ed Sheeran warns that a copyright ruling might “strangle” future songwriters and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Cardi Heads to Trial Over Bawdy Album Cover
In one of the weirder cases you’ll ever hear about, Cardi B is headed to a federal courthouse today to defend against claims that the cover of her debut mixtape “humiliated” a man named Kevin Brophy, who alleges he was unwittingly photoshopped into the artwork to make it look like he was performing oral sex on the now-superstar.Yes, you read that right. And I didn’t even tell you yet that the entire thing hinges on a giant back tattoo featuring “a tiger battling a snake.”As Cardi’s star was rising in 2016, she released Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 with a provocative cover – an image of her swigging a beer, staring into the camera … with a man’s head between her legs. The actual guy in the image was a model (who consented to the whole thing), but the giant tattoo on his back belonged to Brophy (who didn’t). Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit, and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.Years later, the two will now square off before a jury over whether the image broke the law, and whether Cardi herself is to blame.Brophy claims the star and others violated his right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also invasion of his privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive” to a reasonable person. He claims he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover.Cardi says those accusations are “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown.” Her legal team says Cardi had no idea Brophy’s image was being used, and that he’s just suing her in an effort to “cash in the legal equivalent of a lotto ticket.” But their chief argument is even simpler: That nobody would have ever recognized a relatively unknown person based on a cropped image of his back tattoo.“No matter how much plaintiff may be obsessed with the notion, the fact remains that it is not ‘him,’ or a ‘likeness of him,’ or ‘his identity’ in the cover image,” Cardi’s lawyers wrote.Cardi is expected to testify at some point, with a verdict expected by the end of the week or early next week. We’ll keep you posted over at Billboard.com when the news drops.
Other top stories this week…
VLOGGER BETTER HAVE MY MONEY – Elsewhere in Cardi-world, a federal judge ruled that Tasha K – a gossip blogger who made salacious claims about the star – must either immediately pay up on an almost $4 million defamation verdict or secure a bond covering the entire amount. Tasha is currently appealing the verdict and wanted to pause the judgement while she does so, but Cardi’s lawyers warned last month that the YouTuber had bragged about taking steps to “insulate herself” from the huge damages award, and might use the delay to avoid paying entirely.GUNNA DENIED BOND YET AGAIN – For a third time, a Georgia judge refused to release Gunna from jail ahead of his January trial in the sweeping case against Young Thug and others accused of operating a violent gang in the Atlanta area. The order came after prosecutors claimed to have text messages in which a co-defendant in the sprawling case offered to “whack someone” on the rapper’s behalf, prompting the judge to say that he had the “same concerns” about the potential for witness tampering. But just a day later, Gunna’s lawyers cried foul, claiming the alleged smoking gun text actually had “nothing to do with witness intimidation” and had been used to mislead the court.SHOTS FIRED OVER POWERHOUSE MUSIC LAWYER – In an exclusive interview with Billboard’s Frank DiGiacomo, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner blasted the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for its upcoming induction of powerhouse music lawyer Allen Grubman, saying it was “about money and bending to the ego of a music business power broker.” Grubman is one of the most powerful attorneys in the industry, counting Bruce Springsteen, Lizzo, The Weeknd, Lil Nas X, Lady Gaga and other stars as clients, as well as major music companies and digital streamers. But Wenner said he decided to speak out because he believes Grubman clearly doesn’t fit the criteria: “Grubman has made no contribution of any kind, by any definition, to the creative development or the history of rock & roll.”WARHOL & PRINCE AT SCOTUS – More than three decades after Andy Warhol‘s death and six years after Prince‘s sudden passing, the two pop culture icons took center stage at U.S. Supreme Court , as the justices heard arguments in a major copyright case. At issue in the dispute is whether the late Warhol made a legal “fair use” of a photograph of Prince when he used it as the basis for a set of his distinctive screen prints – or merely infringed the copyrights of Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who snapped it. During the proceedings, the justices grappled with tough questions, like what exactly is necessary to “transform” a copyrighted work into a fair use. In a lighter moment, Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed that he had been a fan of Prince’s music “in the ’80s,” to which Justice Elena Kagan asked “no longer?” As the room erupted in laughter, Thomas replied enigmatically: “Only on Thursday night.”ED SHEERAN WARNS OF ‘STRANGLED’ SONGWRITERS – The pop star’s lawyers asked a federal judge to rethink a recent decision that said the singer must face a trial over whether “Thinking Out Loud” infringes Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On.” The decision came two weeks after Judge Louis Stanton refused to toss the case out, ruling that a jury would have to decide Sheeran’s argument that he only borrowed basic, unprotectable musical “building blocks.” In the new filing, the star’s lawyers warned the judge that forcing musicians to face trials over such material would have a chilling effect on the industry and threaten to “strangle creation” by future songwriters. In technical terms, Sheeran’s attorneys want the judge to either undo the ruling entirely, or allow them to immediately appeal it before he faces trial.SLACKER HIT WITH HUGE UNPAID ROYALTY BILL – A federal judge ruled that streaming platform Slacker owes nearly $10 million in unpaid performance royalties to record labels and artists. SoundExchange, which collects streaming royalties for sound recordings, sued Slacker and parent company LiveOne in June, claiming they had refused to pay millions over a five-year period. This week, Judge André Birotte Jr. made it official, ordering that Slacker pay $9,765,396 in unpaid royalties and late fees. Importantly, he also banned the company from using the so-called statutory license – a key copyright provision that allows radio-like streamers to get easy access to licenses at a fixed rate. Now, Slacker will presumably need to negotiate direct licenses from rights holders for sound recordings, similar to what on-demand streaming services like Spotify must do.
Lawyers for George Floyd’s family say they’re getting ready to file a lawsuit against Ye, the artist and entrepreneur formally known as Kanye West, seeking $250 million in damages over his recent claims that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose rather than at the hands of police.
Attorneys for Roxie Washington, the mother of Floyd’s daughter, said Tuesday (Oct. 18) that they plan to sue West for harassment, misappropriation, defamation and infliction of emotional distress over the rapper’s controversial statements, which he made during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast.
“George Floyd’s daughter is being retraumatized by Kanye West’s comments and he’s creating an unsafe and unhealthy environment for her,” said Nuru Witherspoon, Washington’s attorney. “Kanye’s comments are a repugnant attempt to discount George Floyd’s life and to profit from his inhumane death. We will hold Mr. West accountable for his flagrant remarks against Mr. Floyd’s legacy.”
The case will be filed by Washington on behalf of her daughter with Floyd, the attorneys said. It’s unclear when or where the case will be filed. The attorneys said they would seek $250 million in damages, but such claims have little bearing on what is actually awarded at the end of a successful lawsuit.
Washington is represented by Witherspoon’s firm, as well as another firm called Dixon & Dixon.
West could not be reached for comment on the looming litigation.
Floyd, whose May 2020 death sparked national demonstrations against police brutality, was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the street, suffocating him to death. Chauvin was later convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
But in an interview released this weekend by Drink Champs, a popular podcast hosted on Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Revolt media channel, West said he saw things differently: “They hit him with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”
Drink Champs host N.O.R.E., who conducted the interview, has already apologized for the episode, and the episode has been pulled from both Revolt’s site and its YouTube channel.
Multiple cases against Kanye are now potentially in the works by Floyd’s family. On Sunday, civil rights attorney Lee Merritt posted to Twitter that he had been alerted to the comments Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, and was considering how to bring a case against West.
“While one cannot defame the dead, the family of #GeorgeFloyd is considering suit for Kanye’s false statements about the manner of his death,” Merritt tweeted. “Claiming Floyd died from fentanyl not the brutality established criminally and civilly undermines & diminishes the Floyd family’s fight.”
West’s comments about Floyd came amid a storm of controversy for the once-beloved rapper. First he wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to a show at Paris Fashion Week, then he was banned from both Instagram and Twitter over a string of anti-Semitic statements. Later in the same Drink Champs interview, he made more attacks on Jewish people, claiming they control the media and blaming “Jewish Zionists” for coverage about his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her former boyfriend Pete Davidson.
An inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is protesting one of the Hall’s upcoming inductions. Complicating matters is that the protest comes from Jann S. Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone and a co-founder and former chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, who was himself inducted into the institution as a non-performer in 2004, when he was a recipient of the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
Wenner says that entertainment attorney Allen Grubman, who is also a founding board member and set to receive the Ertegun award next month, does not meet the Hall’s criteria for the honor. “Allen Grubman has made no contribution of any kind, by any definition, to the creative development or the history of rock & roll,” says Wenner. “He has been chosen because of his clout as entertainment super lawyer. This decision is about money and bending to the ego of a music business power broker.”
Grubman — long one of the most powerful attorneys in the music industry — counts Bruce Springsteen, Lizzo, The Weeknd, Lil Nas X, J Balvin, U2, Mariah Carey, the David Bowie estate, Lady Gaga and Madonna among the clients of his firm, Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, as well as Spotify, Live Nation, and the major record companies and music publishers. He will be one three recipients of the Ertegun award at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Nov. 5 in Los Angeles along with Interscope Records co-founder/CEO Jimmy Iovine and Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson, who will be inducted posthumously.
Grubman was nominated by Jon Landau, who, in addition to being a founding board member of the hall of fame and the head of its nominating committee, is the manager of Springsteen, a client of Grubman’s firm. Landau — who began his career as a rock critic — and Wenner have been friends and allies since the beginnings of Rolling Stone, as Wenner details in his recent memoir, Like a Rolling Stone. Wenner also takes aim at Grubman in his book in passing, saying the lawyer “didn’t know Jerry Lee Lewis from Jerry Lewis.”
“Jon remains one of my oldest and best friends,” Wenner told Billboard. “But we completely disagree about this. We have different agendas. Mine is the integrity of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Jon has got a business relationship to maintain.” And that relationship, he adds, constitutes a “conflict of interest” when it comes to Landau’s endorsement of Grubman.
The Rolling Stone founder decided to go public with his dissatisfaction after Billboard contacted him about a passage in his memoir detailing his decision to retire as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation at the beginning of 2020 (both Billboard and Rolling Stone are owned by Penske Media Corp.; Wenner no longer has a full-time role with the magazine he founded). “My only worry was the pressure to compromise the integrity of the nominating and voting. I should have known better,” wrote Wenner, who remains a board member. “After I resigned, I was told that music business power-brokers on the board were going to be inducted. These individuals had made not one iota of difference to the history, present or future of the creation of music, which was the explicit criterion. But they had accumulated influence and wealth. It was an inside job.”
Allen Grubman at New World Stages at Worldwide Plaza in New York City.
Michael Kovac/GI for NARAS
Wenner doesn’t name anyone in his book, but in May, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced that Grubman, who is a founder and board member, would receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award, which, according to the organization’s website, is given to “non-performing industry professionals who, through their dedicated belief and support of artists and their music, have had a major influence on the creative development and growth of rock & roll and music that has impacted youth culture.”
When Billboard contacted Wenner about the passage, he confirmed that he was referring to Grubman.
This year’s Ahmet Ertegun Award inductees were chosen for the first time by a committee formed by the hall of fame foundation’s current chairman, iHeartMedia president of entertainment enterprises John Sykes. He is a committee member along with Landau (who also heads the hall’s nominating committee); Jody Gerson, the chairman/CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group; Jon Platt, chairman/CEO, Sony Music Publishing; Rob Light, the head of CAA’s music department; and Joel Peresman, president/CEO of the foundation. A hall of fame insider says that in past years the Ertegun inductees were chosen via a “consensus decision” that included Wenner, Landau, and musicians Paul Shaffer and Robbie Robertson. The source adds that the creation of a formal committee had been Wenner’s suggestion, although Wenner had wanted more people outside of the industry, such as music historians and artists.
According to one source familiar with the situation, “Wenner presented his case against Allen to the full committee” in a “a lively 20-minute debate” during which all of the committee members got to express their views. Multiple sources confirm that the subsequent vote was five-to-one in favor of Grubman’s induction with Wenner casting the sole dissenting vote. (The committee voted unanimously to induct Iovine and Robinson.)
Wenner’s account of the proceedings is significantly different. He says that the discussion and vote regarding Grubman’s induction “was no more than a 45-minute phone call, and prior to that call, I was told by Jon that my dissent would be useless. The issue was already settled,” he says.
In response, the source says, “It is generally routine for committee members to discuss how they would likely vote on different issues before a meeting and how an upcoming vote will likely go.”
Another source familiar with the committee’s voting process says Grubman’s induction is justified because he is “one of the all-time great dealmakers, but his impact and those of the next generation of agents and lawyers who followed him, is not always appreciated.” The source contends that Grubman’s decades of “staunch advocacy and success in negotiating groundbreaking deals for these artists changed the balance of power in the industry,” providing the artists he has represented “the security and stability that allowed them to focus on their craft.”
Wenner says the argument that Grubman “is responsible for historic changes in recording artists’ contractual relationships with record companies is ex-post facto hogwash. This is an artful but disingenuous fig leaf to cover the absence of a valid reason. It is putting lipstick on a pig.”
Wenner says that inducting Grubman into the hall of fame is the equivalent of giving former CAA founder and Disney studios chief Michael Ovitz an Oscar. “The underlying and inescapable truth is that he has not made one iota of difference then, now or for the future of rock & roll,” he says. “He doesn’t make music. He makes money.”
A statement issued by the foundation did not address Wenner’s allegations directly but instead adopts language the hall of fame’s website uses to describe its criteria for the Ahmet Ertegun award: “The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame relies on a diverse group of expert music professionals and artists to select those who are inducted each year. We welcome this year’s group of very well deserving inductees and congratulate them on their significant influence on the music and artists that have moved youth culture.” Grubman, Landau, and spokespersons for Light and Platt declined to comment. Sykes, Peresman and Gerson did not respond to requests for comment.
But one source with ties to the organization says, “This is just Jann being Jann. After all of his great contributions, it’s sad that he’s making these unnecessary personal attacks to bring attention to himself.”
“That is a personal attack,” says Wenner. “Why can’t they defend themselves?”
Streaming platform Slacker owes SoundExchange nearly $10 million in unpaid performance royalties, according to a recent ruling by a federal judge, issued after settlement talks between the two broke down.
SoundExchange, which collects streaming royalties for sound recordings, sued Slacker and parent company LiveOne in June, claiming they had refused to pay millions over a five-year period. As recently as September, court documents indicated the two sides were having “meaningful settlement negotiations.”
But last week, SoundExchange played an unusual legal trump card: A pre-signed consent judgment, inked by execs at Slacker back in 2020 as part of a previous effort to get the streamer to pay its royalty bill. Under the terms of that earlier deal, if Slacker ever defaulted again, its executives agreed that a judge should enter a judgment against the company for the full sum owed.
On Thursday, Judge André Birotte Jr. did exactly that – ordering Slacker to pay $9,765,396 in unpaid royalties and late fees. He also permanently barred the company from using the so-called statutory license, a federal provision that makes copyright licenses for recorded music automatically available to internet radio companies like Slacker and Pandora at a fixed price.
Without access to the statutory license, Slacker will presumably need to negotiate direct licenses from rights holders for sound recordings, similar to what on-demand streaming services like Spotify must do.
A spokesman for Slacker and LiveOne did not return a request for comment on Tuesday. In a statement to Billboard, SoundExchange president and CEO Michael Huppe said the lawsuit demonstrated that the group “takes our role in defending fair compensation for creators seriously.”
“Despite a prior agreement, multiple promises, and repeated negotiations, Slacker and LiveOne failed to pay properly for the music – on which the companies built their business model,” Huppe said. “It is regrettable that this step became necessary, but we will not back down when it comes to protecting creators and ensuring they are well-represented and properly paid under the law.”
We Can[‘t] Work It Out
In its lawsuit, SoundExchange claimed Slacker stopped paying recording royalties way back in 2017, and that a subsequent audit revealed it had been underpaying for years before that. In 2020, the two sides entered into the repayment plan, which gave Slacker two years to pay its debts. But in the June lawsuit, the SoundExchange claimed that Slacker quickly failed to live up to the plan.
“By refusing to pay royalties for the use of protected sound recordings, Slacker and LiveOne have directly harmed creators over the years,” Huppe said at the time. “Today, SoundExchange is taking a stand through necessary legal action to protect the value of music and ensure creators are compensated fairly for their work.”
Though SoundExchange clearly had the earlier agreement as leverage, it appears the two sides tried again to work out a settlement. In early September, attorneys for Slacker asked for more time, saying that the two sides were engaged in “ongoing meaningful settlement negotiations with the expectation that a settlement would be reached.” But they said such talks had not been easy.
“The negotiations have proven to be complicated. There have been a number of offers, back and forth, and numerous emails, calls and discussions,” wrote Jeffrey A. Katz, Slacker’s outside counsel. “A final resolution appears promising but is not guaranteed. Defendants would like to remain focused on their pursuit of a negotiated resolution.”