{"id":1505,"date":"2024-06-25T19:32:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T19:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ai-lawsuit-kanye-settles-megan-thee-stallion-ruling-more-music-law\/"},"modified":"2024-06-25T19:32:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T19:32:04","slug":"ai-lawsuit-kanye-settles-megan-thee-stallion-ruling-more-music-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ai-lawsuit-kanye-settles-megan-thee-stallion-ruling-more-music-law\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Lawsuit, Kanye Settles, Megan Thee Stallion Ruling & More Music Law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from <\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: The world\u2019s biggest music companies file lawsuits against AI music firms accusing them of stealing copyrighted music at \u201can \u201cunimaginable scale\u201d; a federal judge rules that Megan Thee Stallion didn\u2019t copy her chart-topping \u201cSavage\u201d from an earlier song; the artist formerly known as Kanye West settles a copyright lawsuit filed by Donna Summer\u2019s estate; and much more.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Major Labels Sue AI Music Cos. Over Training\u00a0<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tIn the latest battle between the music industry and artificial intelligence firms, the three major music companies filed lawsuits against AI startups Suno and Udio over allegations that they copyrighted music to train their models on an \u201cunimaginable scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like numerous other copyright cases already filed by book authors, visual artists, newspaper publishers and other creative industries, the new lawsuits ask what could ultimately wind up being a trillion-dollar legal question: Is it copyright infringement to use vast troves of proprietary works to build an AI model that spits out new creations? Or is it just a form of legal fair use, transforming all those old works into something entirely new?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The music business already picked that fight once, when major publishers sued AI giant Anthropic last year over its use of written lyrics to train AI models. (That case remains pending). But the new case, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, is the first to deal with sound and music itself, targeting two companies that are offering models that spit out full songs at the push of a button.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suno and Udio have quickly become two of the most important players in the emerging field of AI-generated music. Udio has already produced what could be considered an AI-generated hit song with \u201cBBL Drizzy,\u201d a parody track popularized with a remix by super-producer Metro Boomin and later sampled by Drake himself. And as of May, Suno had raised a total of $125 million in funding to create what Rolling Stone<\/em> called a \u201cChatGPT for music.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the new lawsuit, the record labels alleged that that success had been built on the backs of real human artists: \u201cSince the day it launched, Udio has flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry as part of a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service. Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more, go read Kristin Robinson\u2019s full story<\/a><\/strong> on the new lawsuits, complete with access to the actual complaints filed against Suno and Udio. And stay tuned to Billboard <\/em>for more updates as the two cases unfold in the federal courts\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tMEGAN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE<\/strong> \u2013 A federal judge ruled that Megan Thee Stallion didn\u2019t copy<\/a><\/strong> her chart-topping song \u201cSavage\u201d from an earlier song, saying the songs were \u201cqualitatively different\u201d and that there was no evidence the superstar has ever even heard the little-known instrumental track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SUMMER SAMPLE SETTLEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 Ye (formerly Kanye West) finalized a settlement<\/a><\/strong> with the estate of Donna Summer to resolve a copyright lawsuit that accused him of \u201cshamelessly\u201d using her 1977 hit \u201cI Feel Love\u201d without permission in his song \u201cGood (Don\u2019t Die).\u201d An attorney for the Summer estate confirmed to Billboard <\/em>that the settlement did not include a license for West to legally re-release the offending track: \u201cWe got what we wanted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

YSL TRIAL DRAMA CONTINUES<\/strong> \u2013 Yak Gotti, one of Young Thug\u2019s co-defendants in the YSL gang case in Atlanta, asked the Georgia Supreme Court<\/strong><\/a> to force Judge Ural Glanville<\/strong> to recuse himself from the ongoing trial, citing recent revelations about a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness. Gotti\u2019s lawyers warned that the judge\u2019s actions \u201coffend public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

ALBUM HACKING SUIT RESOLVED <\/strong>\u2013 Kelsea Ballerini reached a settlement<\/a><\/strong> to end her lawsuit against Bo Ewing, a superfan she had accused of hacking her and then leaking her unreleased album. Ballerini agreed to drop the case after Ewing promised to never again share or access the offending materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MADONNA CASE CLOSED <\/strong>\u2013 Two Madonna fans dropped their lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> complaining about delayed starts to her concerts, but the star\u2019s lawyers quickly clarified that the move was \u201cnot the result of any settlement.\u201d Reiterating earlier claims that the lawsuit had been a \u201cstrike suit\u201d aimed at extorting a settlement, Madonna\u2019s attorneys say they might still seek legal sanctions against the lawyers who filed the \u201cfrivolous\u201d case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

PETTY DOC SPARKS LAWSUIT <\/strong>\u2013 A filmmaker named Martyn Atkins filed a lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> <\/a>against Warner Music over the 2021 Tom Petty documentary Somewhere You Feel Free<\/em>, claiming the movie featured 45 minutes of his copyrighted film footage of the late rock legend without permission or payment. Atkins claimed he had been \u201cconned\u201d into sharing the footage with the producers after they promised him the chance to direct the documentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1627,153,303,455,593,686,322,457,456],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-kanye","tag-law","tag-lawsuit","tag-megan","tag-music","tag-ruling","tag-settles","tag-stallion","tag-thee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}