{"id":4650,"date":"2025-03-13T01:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T01:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sony-music-sues-usc-over-tiktok-videos-with-songs-by-beyonce-others\/"},"modified":"2025-03-13T01:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T01:19:06","slug":"sony-music-sues-usc-over-tiktok-videos-with-songs-by-beyonce-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sony-music-sues-usc-over-tiktok-videos-with-songs-by-beyonce-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony Music Sues USC Over TikTok Videos With Songs by Beyonce & Others"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tS<\/span>ony Music is suing the University of Southern California (USC) for more than $25 million over claims that the college sports powerhouse illegally used songs by Michael Jackson, Beyonce and AC\/DC in TikTok and Instagram videos hyping its teams.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a complaint filed Tuesday (March 11) in New York federal court, the music giant says the school posted more than 250 videos featuring over 170 unlicensed tracks to its social media channels, including those by Britney Spears, Harry Styles, SZA, Mariah Carey, OutKast, Pink Floyd and Travis Scott.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUSC has one of the most lucrative college sports programs in the world, realizing over $200 million annually in revenues from its participation in a multi-billion dollar college sports,\u201d the label\u2019s attorneys write. \u201cDespite having been on notice of its infringing conduct, USC has repeatedly failed to obtain licenses for its use of Sony Music sound recording.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeeking $150,000 in so-called statutory damages for every song used, the lawsuit is demanding more than $25 million in potential damages \u2014 or more, if Sony can prove that it suffered even greater losses.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the university said: \u201cUSC respects the intellectual property rights of others and will respond to these allegations in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the lawsuit, USC was notified of the problem in June 2021 and has been repeatedly warned since, including in 2023 when Sony says it \u201cnotified USC again of numerous additional unauthorized exploitations.\u201d The label claims the two sides reached a deal in August to allow for settlement talks, but that no resolution was ever reached \u2014 and infringing videos kept being posted.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRather than cease this infringing conduct, USC chose to flout copyright law, repeatedly posting new videos to the USC Social Media Pages that use Sony Music sound recordings knowingly and willfully and without permission,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cUSC even left many uses available online after being put on notice from Sony Music that they were infringing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSocial media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there\u2019s a key restriction: The songs can\u2019t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate \u201csynch\u201d license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeginning in 2021, all three majors sued drink maker Bang Energy over its TikTok videos, with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music eventually winning large judgments. In May, Sony filed a case against Marriott over accusations that the hotel chain had used nearly 1,000 of its songs in social media posts. In July, Kobalt and other publishers sued more than a dozen NBA teams over the same thing. The restaurant chain Chili\u2019s has been sued twice, once by the Beastie Boys and later by UMG over tracks from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and dozens of other artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Tuesday\u2019s case against USC, attorneys for Sony say that the school\u2019s own social media brand guidelines expressly warned against using copyrighted music in videos: \u201cIf you want to feature \u2018popular music\u2019 in your video, as in music you hear on the radio, you must license it from the publishing company and or record company,\u201d USC\u2019s guide allegedly reads.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn flagrant disregard of this clear guidance, USC itself has distributed hundreds of videos (if not more) which contain infringing uses of Sony Music\u2019s sound recordings,\u201d Sony\u2019s lawyers write in the lawsuit. \u201cThese uses were made without permission, without compensation to Sony Music and its artists, and in violation of USC\u2019s own written guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSony Music claims the offending videos also included music by 21 Savage, Earth, Wind & Fire, Elvis Presley, Future, Lil Nas X, Nas, One Direction, Rage Against The Machine, Shakira and The White Stripes. The videos were also allegedly posted to USC\u2019s Facebook and YouTube accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony Music is suing the University of Southern California (USC) for more than $25 million over claims that the college sports powerhouse illegally used songs by Michael Jackson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1304,593,3790,1840,479,182,5055,2219],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-beyonce","tag-music","tag-songs","tag-sony","tag-sues","tag-tiktok","tag-usc","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","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=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}