Off the Grid

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!”