{"id":3197,"date":"2024-11-05T03:02:21","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T03:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-lawsuit-says-tunecore-infringed-music-by-rihanna-ariana-grande\/"},"modified":"2024-11-05T08:34:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T08:34:39","slug":"umg-lawsuit-says-tunecore-infringed-music-by-rihanna-ariana-grande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-lawsuit-says-tunecore-infringed-music-by-rihanna-ariana-grande\/","title":{"rendered":"UMG Lawsuit Says TuneCore Infringed Music by Rihanna, Ariana Grande"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group have filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of \u201cmassive ongoing infringements\u201d of their sound recordings, including tracks by Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, ABBA, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, DJ Snake, Aqua and more. The companies are seeking \u201cat least $500,000,000\u201d in damages.<\/p>\n

In a complaint filed Monday evening (Nov. 4) in Manhattan federal court by Andrew Bart<\/strong> and Gianni Servodidio<\/strong> at Jenner & Block, UMG, ABKCO and Concord Music Group accuse Believe of being \u201coverrun with fraudulent \u2018artists\u2019 and pirate record labels\u201d and distributing copies of those fraudulent recordings to various streaming services and social media sites.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that \u201cBelieve makes little effort to hide its illegal actions\u201d and that the allegedly infringing recordings are \u201coften minor variants on the names of\u2026 famous recording artists and titles of their most successful works.\u201d The complaint says the alleged fraudsters attempt to avoid detection of the allegedly infringing recordings \u2014 some of which, they claim, are \u201csped up\u201d or \u201cremixed\u201d versions of popular songs \u2014 by using misspellings of popular artist names, including \u201cKendrik Laamar,\u201d \u201cArriana Gramde,\u201d \u201cJutin Biber\u201d and \u201cLlady Gaga.\u201d\u00a0 Best accident lawyer near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Civil Litigation Lawyer near me<\/a> |\u00a0|\u00a0Best Car accident lawyer near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Child custody lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Child support lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Copyright lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Divorce lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Criminal Defense Lawyers Near Me<\/a> |<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve is fully aware that its business model is fueled by rampant piracy\u201d in \u201cpursuit of rapid growth,\u201d the lawsuit claims, adding that the company has \u201cturned a blind eye\u201d to the infringing content that makes its way to social media and streaming services through its platform.<\/p>\n

Additionally, lawyers for UMG and the other plaintiffs say that \u201cBelieve has taken advantage of the content management claiming system\u201d on YouTube \u201cto divert\u201d and \u201cdelay\u2026 payment of royalties\u201d that belong to the record labels. It is \u201ctelling,\u201d they add, that after YouTube resolves these conflicts regarding the rightful ownership of these sound recordings, \u201cBelieve continue[s] to distribute the exact same track to other digital music service providers and to seek royalties for use of that track from those providers.\u201d Drunk driving accident lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Dui Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Elder law Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Employment law Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Estate planning Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Family law Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Foreclosure Lawyers near me<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Best Immigration Lawyers near me<\/a><\/p>\n

This is not the first time bad actors have been accused of using YouTube\u2019s content management system to claim royalties that are not rightfully theirs. In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists. To facilitate claiming those royalties, the two men, operating under the company name MediaMuv, used AdRev, a rights management firm owned by Downtown.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve is a company built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,\u201d said a spokesperson for UMG in a statement. \u201cTheir illegal practices are not limited to cheating artists on major labels but artists on independent labels as well \u2014 including artists on the independent labels within the trade bodies of which Believe is itself a member. It\u2019s no wonder that Believe has been outspoken against the streaming reform principles for which so many major and independent labels have been advocating. Why? Because such reforms would undermine and expose their system of building scale and market presence by distributing music for which they have no rights and illegally collecting royalties to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complaint specifically charges Believe with direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, direct infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings, contributory infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings and vicarious infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings.<\/p>\n

Representatives for Believe and TuneCore did not immediately respond to Billboard<\/em>\u2018s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a busy year for TuneCore\u2019s parent company Believe. On March 1, the French music giant, which was publicly traded on the Euronext Paris stock exchange, announced that its board of directors had approved the move to take it private and that there was an \u201cinterested party\u201d looking to acquire it. First, however, the bidder was requesting due diligence information and financial data ahead of making a formal bid. Later that month, the name of the bidder was revealed when it was announced that Warner Music Group (WMG) had issued a formal notice to disclose its interest in acquiring Believe, which also owns publishing administrator Sentric as well as labels like Na\u00efve, Nuclear Blast and Groove Attack.<\/p>\n

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In early April, however, WMG called off its plans to submit a formal offer. The label did not elaborate on its decision, stating only that it was made \u201cafter careful consideration.\u201d On April 19, Believe\u2019s board of directors announced it was supporting an offer to take the company private at 15 euros ($15.98) per share from a consortium of funds managed by TCV, EQT X and Believe chairman\/CEO Denis Ladegaillerie<\/strong>. The board\u2019s three independent members unanimously voted in favor of an opinion that the bid was in the interest of minority shareholders.<\/p>\n

Fraud and copyright infringement have been hot-button issues in the music business as the industry becomes more and more democratized, offering anyone the opportunity to release music in hours \u2014 sometimes minutes \u2014 at the click of a button. In response, TuneCore, along with CD Baby, Distrokid and other competitors, set up \u201cMusic Fights Fraud,\u201d a coalition designed to stop bad actors from hopping from service-to-service to release songs they don\u2019t own the rights to. A number of initiatives, including Credits Due, have since launched to try to fix metadata problems in the music business that can leave artists susceptible to royalty stealing and fraud, particularly on sites like YouTube.<\/p>\n

Still, despite these efforts, TuneCore and other DIY distributors have been accused of allowing bad actors to use their sites to upload infringing or fraudulent content. In August 2020, Round Hill Music\u2019s publishing arm sued TuneCore for \u201cwillful and unauthorized use\u201d of 219 of their sound recordings. And in 2022, Billboard <\/em>reported that some music executives believe Create Music Group games the system on YouTube to claim royalties, with one label source claiming the company was doing so \u201cegregiously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last month, TikTok also rang the alarm bell about fraudulent content when it backed out of licensing negotiations with Merlin, a coalition of indie labels and distributors, to allegedly curb users uploading works they don\u2019t own the rights to on the platform. TikTok said it would instead\u00a0pursue individual licensing deals with labels and distributors that it considered to be safe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group have filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of \u201cmassive ongoing infringements\u201d of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2402,2403,3136,303,593,4020,4019,1109],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-ariana","tag-grande","tag-infringed","tag-lawsuit","tag-music","tag-rihanna","tag-tunecore","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","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=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3205,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions\/3205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}