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From Paper Checks to $10 Billion: SoundExchange Celebrates 20 Years of Royalty Payments
In his Washington, D.C. office, Michael Huppe rolls his chair past gold records, an Elvis Costello poster and an electric guitar to a back shelf to locate a key and unlock a drawer. “Let me see if I still have it here,” the SoundExchange president/CEO says before pulling out a black vest with capital yellow letters that read “RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit” and draping it over his coat.
Prior to collecting performance royalties from digital radio stations, as well as broadcast companies such as SiriusXM and distributing them to creators for non-interactive digital streaming through SoundExchange, Huppe helped hunt down piracy rings around the country for the RIAA to ensure artists weren’t losing out on revenue. “I have gone on raids — flea markets, cassette operations, some CD operations,” he says.
Since Huppe joined SoundExchange in 2007, his tactics have changed — but his primary goal of getting performers and rights owners paid has not. Over the past two decades, he has helped raise their royalty rates and helped track them down at locations from music festivals to Mississippi Delta homes to distribute earned royalty payments. Now SoundExchange is marking its 20th anniversary and, in May, announced it had distributed $10 billion overall in payments. According to the organization’s most recent annual report released in July, SoundExchange collected $1 billion in digital royalties from more than 3,600 digital streaming platforms and distributed them to over 600,000 creators and rights holders in 2022 alone.
“You recognize you’re really making a difference in people’s lives,” Huppe says.
Explain what it means for SoundExchange to cross what it calls the “$10 billion distribution milestone.”
The growth rate of our payments surprised everyone, including me. When I came over to SoundExchange, I saw streaming was going to grow. We pay significant amounts of money to the big superstars, but also good amounts to working-class musicians that you may or may not have heard of. It makes a difference as to whether they stay in the industry. During the pandemic, for a lot of those musicians, we were the only revenue stream. The emails we received … it’s really gratifying.
What are some examples of those messages?
One band with regional popularity had been driving around trying to make it in a van, crashing on friends’ couches, barely getting by. We were trying to find them because we had money for them. They were literally about to hang it up — they were at the end of their run, running out of steam. That initial SoundExchange payment made all the difference and incentivized them to keep going.
There was a widow of a Delta blues singer we had been trying to find forever. We finally found her, and she was in tears because they were about to foreclose on her house and because of that [payment], they saved her house.
Country artist Randy Travis (seated), his wife, Mary Travis, and Michael Huppe.
Courtesy of SoundExchange
After working at the RIAA, you joined SoundExchange in 2007, which had been operating for four years. What were those early days on the job like?
We were still sending out paper checks. Back then, they were quarterly or semi-annually, and half the staff would gather into a room and run the distribution. That makes me think how far we’ve come, from paper checks to a system that processes 35 billion [digital] performances a month from 600,000 accounts. We were like, “Oh, my God — the next $100,000 [comes in] this quarter!” Now we’re regularly doing $1 billion [in payouts] per year.
It’s SoundExchange’s 20th anniversary. What have been the company’s biggest achievements during your tenure?
When I first started working — I guess I was still at the RIAA — SiriusXM was paying 2% of revenue, and now it’s 15.5%. And streaming rates we get from webcasting have more than quadrupled. We’ve done a really good job of demonstrating and achieving the value for music. [Editor’s note: In August, SoundExchange filed a lawsuit against SiriusXM claiming the platform is “gaming the system” to “grossly underpay the royalties it owes” to the amount of $150 million by manipulating how it bundles satellite services with web streaming services. A representative for SiriusXM has denied the allegations.]
How has SoundExchange helped those rate increases?
For the first few years, we would go before this three-judge panel at the Copyright Royalty Board. We’ve had a good track record of convincing them why we should be paid higher rates for music, which is so important to these services. The last satellite radio proceeding we had went from 11% to 15.5% overnight. So Dec. 31 of one year [2017], it was 11%, and the next day, they were paying us 15.5%. For the most part, it has been a gradual uptick.
What is SoundExchange’s general strategy for helping to persuade the CRB to raise the rates?
You put on artist witnesses and people from the union and record-label folks who explain what goes into the making of sound recordings. You bring in experts who can talk about the profitand-loss situation or what the future five years of the industry is projecting. You do all that the right way and make a convincing case, and the court increasingly recognizes the value music plays in the services. They are big, long, expensive cases, but it’s worth it because we have to look out for the value of music.
How quickly does SoundExchange make those payments?
Ninety percent of our royalties are out the door in 45 days, whereas around the world, on average, folks pay out annually, semi-annually or quarterly. We’re working for the creators. Our job is to take their money from the digital service providers and get it to them as accurately and efficiently as possible.
Are you a musician?
I’ve played piano since I was 4 years old. My chops are not what they used to be! So don’t ask me that. I played in different bands through high school. I’ve always loved music.
I’ll be honest with you: I never thought I’d end up in the music industry. I’m a recovering lawyer. When I was in law school, I got really interested in intellectual property [IP]. It’s this thing you can’t touch, you can’t hold, it’s not tangible — but the government vests a property right in it because they want to incentivize investment in creation. It just was a really interesting concept. [Without it], you wouldn’t have research in the next cancer treatment. You wouldn’t have people investing in music or movies or software.
Rapper Armani White (left) and Michael Huppe.
Courtesy of SoundExchange
After Harvard Law School, you started at the RIAA in 2000. How did you get to that job?
I clerked in court in the Eastern District of Virginia. We saw a lot of IP — when someone’s infringing your patent, you could be losing millions of dollars a day or tens of millions, and it makes a difference going to a quick court. When I started out as a lawyer in a law firm here, I tried to do IP if I could, but I was just doing general litigation. I got this headhunter to [help me] come over to work at this place called the RIAA, which happened to be across the street from where I was working. I came in to do litigation and piracy work and a lot of other things at the RIAA.
Like what?
There were still full-blown, big, commercial pirate cassette operations. I was helping to develop processes and cases. Slowly, that work moved from cassettes to commercial CDs to burnable CDs and downloads, and by the time I left, it was all streaming. We had eight offices around the country, probably 60 people in the department, tons of investigators. I helped create a system where we could build our own cases against pirates because we started to move toward the civil side instead of just criminal.
Any stories about busting flea markets?
The more tense times are when you’re going to someone’s house and they’ve got a CD-burning factory in the basement. Then you move on to the internet. It’s a whole different ball of wax. You’ve got people hiding behind 14 different anonymizers who may not even be based in this country. It was an interesting way to get into the business, that’s for sure.
In addition to Michael Huppe, SoundExchange is guided by an executive leadership team consisting of (from top) chief business officer Tommy Korpinen, CFO/COO Anjula Singh, general counsel Tim Dadson and chief technology officer Luis Bonilla.
Elliot O’Donovan
What are the next big goals for SoundExchange?
SoundExchange, 10 years from now, is going to be an even bigger part of the industry than we are today. When we moved into publishing in June 2022, part of that was to bring some of the same philosophy and perspective and transparency into the publishing world that we brought into the sound-recording world. The ultimate thing is to marry up the metadata. Wouldn’t it be great if there was one central nonprofit place where you had all the authoritative data about who wrote the song, who owns the publishing, what are the splits, who played [in the] background, who sang vocals? It’s interesting and a little crazy we don’t have that as an industry. If we can move in that direction, that removes friction.
Obviously, [artificial intelligence] is a big topic. There are a lot of benefits and a lot of threats. We would like to play a part in making sure AI is rolled out responsibly so we can take advantage of all the benefits, but also set up guardrails so it doesn’t hurt creators — and, by the way, society.
I would love to continue our work in making the business side of music flow more smoothly. The sign of success, in 10 years, is that no one’s even talking about transparency or metadata or mistaken lineups or not knowing who wrote a song. I hope in 10 years, we’re not even talking about that because we’ve solved the problems that got us here.
How has SoundExchange changed over 20 years?
In those early years, people didn’t necessarily know who SoundExchange was. We would have money for somebody and contact them: “Just give us your name and number and bank account.” Understandably, people rarely give that up unless they get to know you. I think people know who we are now. At South by Southwest, we get a list of all the bands, we cross-reference bands, we put up fliers: “Do you know this band? Send them here. We have money for them.” If you’re commercially active in the industry and you don’t know who SoundExchange is, that’s kind of more on you than it is on us.
SoundExchange’s Fight for Fairness
Visitors are cast in silhouette at the top of stairs near the Capitol Visitors Center at the United States Capitol on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Under its president/CEO, Michael Huppe, SoundExchange has consistently supported the American Music Fairness Act — which would, for the first time ever, impel terrestrial radio companies to pay performers and copyright holders when airing their songs.
Since U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., introduced the bill in June 2021, it has slowly progressed through Congress. In December 2022, the House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation. “For decades, broadcast corporations have made hundreds of billions of dollars while denying creators royalties for music played on AM/FM radio stations,” Huppe said in a statement at the time. “That’s fundamentally wrong.” In February, Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; Thom Tillis R-N.C.; and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reintroduced the bill into the U.S. Senate.
On its website, SoundExchange summarized a key exception for small, local broadcasters: Those making less than $1.5 million in annual revenue and whose parent companies make less than $10 million annually would pay just $2 per day to rights holders so they could play any song they want over the air.
The National Association of Broadcasters, which opposes the bill, last December called the legislation an “onerous performance fee” and a “new performance tax” that would “irrevocably damage local radio.” Since the Copyright Act of 1909, broadcasters have consistently won this argument. In the 1930s, top bandleaders Fred Waring and Paul Whiteman formed an advocacy group called the National Association of Performing Arts; in the late 1980s, Frank Sinatra wrote letters to fellow pop stars to build a unified artist coalition; and in the 1990s, Congress passed laws forcing digital services to pay royalties and exempted over-the-air broadcasters from doing the same.
In a December 2022 Billboard op-ed, Huppe countered the NAB: “Corporate broadcasters argue that a ‘mutually beneficial relationship’ exists between AM/FM radio and music creators,” he wrote. “Yet their actions belie that claim, as they spend millions to fight this legislation and avoid sharing the billions of dollars they make in advertising from music.”
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Why Jorja Smith’s New Album Is Her Most Inspired Yet
All that Jorja Smith likes to do is write and sing — which makes separating herself from her career “a bit tricky” sometimes. “I’ll have days where I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I wish I gave myself a different name because I need to switch Jorja Smith off,’ ” she says. “I don’t want to be Jorja Smith all of the time.”
Struggling to find balance not only speaks to her Gemini zodiac sign, says the 26-year-old artist, but is also at the core of her highly anticipated second album, Falling or Flying, out Sept. 29 on her longtime independent label, FAMM. “I don’t really have an in between. I’m either happy or sad, obsessed or completely unfocused, up or down,” she says. “I feel like I’m flying in my career, and then other times, I feel like I’m falling because the pressure can feel [like] too much.”
At 18, Smith left her hometown of Walsall, England, and traveled two-and-a-half hours south to London in order to pursue music full time. Her secondary school yearbook named her most likely to become famous — and she quickly ascended to become one of the United Kingdom’s brightest stars. In 2016, Smith uploaded her socially conscious debut single, “Blue Lights,” to SoundCloud, and it garnered nearly half a million plays in one month. The song eventually appeared on her 2018 critically acclaimed debut album, Lost & Found, which boasted slow-burning songs that blended R&B, reggae, hip-hop, jazz and neo-soul production with a songwriting approach inspired by Amy Winehouse. All the while, Smith earned co-signs from Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy, as well as acclaim in the form of a 2018 BRITs Critics’ Choice Award and a 2019 Grammy nod for best new artist.
But fulfilling her yearbook prophecy had a disorienting effect on Smith, who became famous in her early 20s. After tiding fans over with the 2021 EP Be Right Back, she moved home to Walsall at the beginning of 2023. “I went back when I finally decided I’ve had enough of London … It’s a bit overwhelming sometimes,” she says with a sigh. “I moved back and I feel a lot more balanced. I feel more myself now.”
On Falling or Flying, Smith soars over sprightly tracks that experiment with acoustic indie-rock production, syncopated basslines and retro synth chords. She enlisted U.K. jungle DJ-producer Nia Archives to remix the album’s second single, “Little Things,” which captured a flirty, feverish energy quintessential for clubbing in its original form. But some songs demand the coziness of a jazz club, where Smith’s lithe, velvety vocals can fill the space on their own — and quiet those around her. While Lost & Found comprised teenage love songs Smith had written when she was 16, Falling or Flying finds the singer stepping “into womanhood” and being more sure of herself than ever before. As she sings on “Backwards,” “I stand here and I look down on myself and I am so proud.” Meanwhile, on tracks like “Broken Is the Man” and “Try Me,” she challenges past lovers and harsh critics.
Walsall production duo DameDame* — Smith has known one of its members since she was 15 — was responsible for most of Falling or Flying, another sign that returning to her roots better served her music. “We laughed, ate food, sang, cried, jammed some more,” she says. “It wasn’t like, ‘I need to make the album uptempo.’ It was just, ‘Let’s mess around, have fun and see what happens.’ ”
Smith teases that she’ll take Falling or Flying on the road for her first headlining run in five years. “That’s all I want to do,” she says, beaming. “That’s where I feel at home. In Walsall and onstage is where I feel like, ‘OK, I can just be me.’ ”
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Metallica’s Black Squirrel Fuels $5M Round at Word Collections
Word Collections, the publishing administration firm launched in July 2020 by serial music industry entrepreneur Jeff Price, has closed on a $5 million investment round to boost the company’s global licensing and collection efforts. Metallica‘s Black Squirrel Partners was the lead investor in the round in Word, which specializes in musical and comedic recordings.
Word Collections handles global licensing for — and collections from — digital music services, thus bypassing traditional mechanical and digital performance collection societies around the world. This reduces administrative fees and helps ensure the data of its songwriters and comedians’ works are properly registered at each DSP.
As for other publishing income streams and licensing — including synchronization and performance for television, radio, and general licensing to stores, bars, hotels and, etc. — Word has a joint venture with Blue Water Publishing International that promotes Word’s catalog and handles collections from those sectors, which includes being a member of over 40 collection societies around the globe.
Current Word clients include the publishing catalogs for Metallica and the band’s guitarist Kirk Hammett, Greta Van Fleet, Thomas Dolby, Songwriters Guild Of America, Gerencia360, St. Nicholas, Baroness, The Offspring’s Bryan “Dexter” Holland, Shriekback, DLG., Bazanji, Gomba Music, John Oates, Switchfoot and Grace Potter, among other musical songwriters. It also represents the comedy catalogs of Robin Williams, George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, David Cross, Ron White, Bill Hicks, Bill Engvall, Billy Crystal and numerous other authors and comedians.
Jeff Price
Courtesy of Jeff Price
Prior to starting Word Collections, Price co-founded TuneCore and also launched Audiam, now owned and/or controlled by other entities, respectively Believe Music and the SESAC. According to Word Collections’ announcement of the new financing, the funds will be employed to accelerate global direct licensing and for the enhancement of Word Collections’ proprietary technology and systems.
Black Squirrel was founded in 2020 by former Morgan Stanley executive Paul Donahue, Metallica and its in-house leadership team (Tony DiCioccio, Marc Reiter and Vickie Strate), WG&S founder Eric Wasserman and Artist Management firm Q Prime, with music industry executive Rick Krim also a partner of Black Squirrel.
Diddy Honors His 2022 Pledge & Donates $1 Million Each To Jackson State Football Team & Earn Your Leisure Fund
Source: Paras Griffin / Getty / Diddy
Diddy is putting his money where his mouth is and is giving back to HBCUs.
The man who once rapped, “Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks,” did just that over the weekend at this year’s Invest Fest in Atlanta for causes he cares deeply about HBCUs and financial literacy.
Spotted on PEOPLE, the 56-year-old mogul announced his $1 million investment fund in partnership with Earn Your Leisure with its founders Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings on hand to receive the financial blessing from the “Bad Boy for Life” crafter.
Per PEOPLE:
The fund will go toward financial literacy efforts, “[putting] the investment strategies discussed on EYL into action” and “providing a practical model for economic empowerment,” according to a press release from Diddy’s investment portfolio, Combs Global.
“I’m thrilled to join forces with Earn Your Leisure,” Combs said in the release. “We’re going beyond discussing finances and taking action to demystify the world of investing for our community.”
During his speech at Invest Fest on Friday, Diddy announced that the fund would benefit his three Capital Preparatory charter schools in New York and Connecticut.
Diddy Also Blessed Jackson State University
Diddy’s charitable efforts didn’t stop there.
He headed to Georgia State’s Center Parc Stadium for a South Carolina State versus Jackson State University football game to hand-deliver a $1 million check to Jackson State University’s football team.
Per a press release, like his donation to the EYL, it will be “geared towards fostering economic empowerment and upholding the legacies of historically Black institutions,” PEOPLE reports.
Combs, a Howard University graduate, shared a video of a moment, writing in the post’s caption, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for HBCUs. It is my honor and my responsibility to support the HBCUs! The work they are doing is to be commended! My grandmother raised me to sow my seed in my community and that’s what I’m going to continue to do!!”
Diddy’s latest philanthropic efforts follow his 2022 BET Lifetime Achievement Award speech, where he noted it was his “responsibility” to give back to HBCUs.
Salute to Brother Love, aka Diddy.
Photo: Paras Griffin / Getty
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YG Drops New T-Shirts Using Donald Trump’s Mug Shot
YG’s disdain for former President Donald Trump has reached new levels. The rapper released T-shirts thrashing the controversial figure over the former president’s Aug. 24 arrest in Georgia on felony charges of plotting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
The $35 merch, announced Friday (Aug. 25), uses Trump’s mug shot with the caption “F—-d” and is available on YG’s 4Hunnid.com website. Listed as the “FDT T-shirt” — a callback to the rapper’s 2016 anthem “F– Donald Trump” featuring Nipsey Hussle — YG’s lambasted the former president on numerous occasions.
“It got to a point where [Trump] was disrespectin’, saying s–t that makes no sense,” the rapper told Billboard following the release of “FDT.” “Me and Nip always talk about doing real s–t about these politics, stepping up and saying stuff other motherf—ers are not doing so we finally hit the studio and really did it.”
Following the release of “FDT,” YG claimed that the Secret Service reached out to his former label, Def Jam. “Secret Service hollered at the label,” he told TMZ at the time. “They asked if they could see the lyrics on my album to see if I’m talking about it on my album. ‘Cause I’m talking about it on my album, they gon’ try to take it off the shelf.”
YG continued to skewer Trump throughout the years, most notably in 2019 when he brought out former adult entertainer Stormy Daniels to bash the former president during the rapper’s Camp Flog Gnaw performance. Then in 2020, YG released his “Jealous” video, which mocked the twice impeached politician.
Check out YG’s T-shirts below.
Selena Gomez Reveals She Had to Have Surgery After Breaking Her Hand
Selena Gomez is excited that her new single, “Single Soon,” is poised to make an impressive debut on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. But in response to a fan post on Sunday hyping the predicted top 20 debut, Gomez revealed that she’s psyched, but currently has bigger fish to fry.
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“Broke my hand and had surgery,” Gomez revealed in a response to the post without giving any additional details about the extent or date of the injury. “I don’t care about selling anything. I’m just happy to make music with my friends.” At press time a spokesperson for Gomez had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional details on the injury.
Gomez has been working on her anticipated third studio album and while there is still no update on a release date or title, the Only Murders in the Building star dropped her late summer jam “Single Soon” on Friday, telling her faithful, “Since I’m not quite done with SG3, I wanted to put out a fun little song I wrote a while back that’s perfect for the end of summer.”
Gomez’s most recent full-length album was 2020’s Rare, which was followed up in 2021 with the all-Spanish EP Revalación. After some fans speculated that the new song was possibly aimed at Sel’s ex, The Weeknd (who now goes by his full name, Abel Tesfaye) — who she dated from January to October 2017 — the singer laid the rumors to rest in a comment on Hollywood Life’s Instagram over the weekend, writing, “couldn’t be more false.”
The speculation came after Gomez weighed in on another Weeknd-adjacent story last week, calling an AI reimagining of Abel’s 2016 single “Starboy” featuring her vocals and face on the cover “scary.”
See Gomez’s comment below.
Selena Gomez Responds to Fan Speculation That ‘Single Soon’ Is About The Weeknd
When Selena Gomez sings about the weekend on her new song “Single Soon,” she’s referring to Friday, Saturday and Sunday — not 33-year-old Canadian superstar The Weeknd.
After coming across speculation that the “Blinding Lights” singer inspired her new single — which finds Gomez happily boasting about her plans to break up with a boyfriend and go partying on her own — the 31-year-old pop star promptly shut it down.
“Couldn’t be more false,” she responded to a HollywoodLife Instagram post about the fan speculation.
Gomez and The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) did date for about 10 months, striking up a romance in 2017 before ending it that same year. But even though they’ve been broken up for almost six years, some listeners thought that certain lyrics in “Single Soon” were disguised nods to the Idol star. For instance, “I don’t wanna see a tear” seems to echo Tesfaye’s 2020 smash “Save Your Tears,” which was also rumored to be about Gomez.
She also sings on the track, “And the weekend’s almost here,” which some fans may have thought was a reference to Tesfaye’s stage name.
Regardless of who the song’s about, people have been loving Gomez’s return to music via “Single Soon,” which she released Aug. 25 along with a carefree music video. “Y’all have been asking for new music for a while,” she wrote of the track on Instagram a week prior to its release. “Since I’m not quite done with SG3, I wanted to put out a fun little song I wrote a while back that’s perfect for the end of summer.”
One of those fans is none other than Taylor Swift, Gomez’s fellow pop star and longtime BFF. “WHEN UR BESTIE IS THE BESTEST,” Swift wrote on her Instagram Story, sharing a clip from the “Single Soon” music video. “WILL BE DANCING TO THIS FOREVER METHINKS.”
WME Acquires True Grit Talent Agency, Expands Presence in Austin
WME has acquired Austin, Texas-based True Grit Talent Agency, signing its entire roster including Cody Jinks, Charles Wesley Godwin, Whitey Morgan and the 78’s, Ward Davis, Dexter and The Moonrocks, Bart Crow and Mitchell Ferguson.
True Grit’s team, including agents Mike Krug, Carrie Creasey and Shelby Vanek, have also joined WME and will continue to work out of Austin.
“We are very excited that what we do caught the eye of a company like WME,” Krug said in a statement. “We are proud of all we have built here in Austin and know that joining WME will create exponentially more opportunities for our clients.”
“We’ve long admired the business and roster that True Grit has developed, and we are excited to bring their artists and the team into the WME family and expand WME’s footprint in Austin,” Jay Williams, WME Partner and Nashville office co-head, added in a statement.
The move deepens WME’s presence in Texas, following its acquisition of Red 11 Music earlier this year.
Jinks, known for songs including “Loud and Heavy” and “Hippies and Cowboys,” has been opening shows on Eric Church’s Outsiders Revival Tour. Jinks will headline Red Rocks Amphitheater this fall, and will be among the openers on Luke Combs’ Growing Up and Getting Old Tour next year. Meanwhile, Big Loud artist Godwin is gearing up for the release of his album Family Ties next month, and is opening shows on Zach Bryan‘s Burn, Burn, Burn Tour; Godwin also recently inked a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music.
WME represented all three headliners at Stagecoach in 2023; in 2022, WME clients represented over 60% of all headlining slots at the top-country music festivals. Meanwhile, the company’s country music clients have earned the most categories at the ACM Awards and CMA Awards for multiple years.
Judge Awards ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ Victims $10.5 Million For Terrorist Threat In 2018
Source: Amy Sussman / Getty
A few of R. Kelly’s victims who participated in the Surviving R. Kelly docuseries were subjected to all kinds of threats for exposing the self-proclaimed “R&B thug” and now a judge has decided to award them some monetary compensation for their troubles.
According to documents obtained by TMZ, six of the “I Wish” singer’s victims will be awarded a total of $10.5 million dollars straight from the pockets of R. Kelly and his manager, Donnell Russell, after successfully suing them for shutting down the 2018 screening of Surviving R. Kelly in New York City.
TMZ reports:
They alleged the defendants waged a campaign, starting back in May 2018, to intimidate the women, A&E/Lifetime and the producers to stop screening the docuseries. When those efforts, including legal threats, failed … they claimed Kelly’s camp called producers on the night of the NYC screening and said someone was “going to shoot up the place.”
The fake mass shooting threat worked, as the event was shut down — and according to the victims, it all opened up past trauma and resulted in them suffering PTSD and panic attacks.
Apparently, R. Kelly and his peoples didn’t want the public to hear his victims’ side of their story and will now have to pay dearly for it. Each of the six women will be compensated with a little more than $1 million each for their pain and suffering, but whether or not they’ll ever see a penny of that money is anyone’s guess as Kelly isn’t exactly rolling in it like he was in his very abundant heyday.
Though his music is still generating $500,000 in royalties from Universal Music Group to this day, who knows how long it will take for each woman to get their proper compensation.
What do y’all think of the judge’s decision? Too much or too little? Let us know in the comments section below.
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