{"id":5043,"date":"2025-04-02T16:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/siriusxm-responds-to-lawsuit-over-royalty-fee-nothing-misleading\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T16:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:50:12","slug":"siriusxm-responds-to-lawsuit-over-royalty-fee-nothing-misleading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/siriusxm-responds-to-lawsuit-over-royalty-fee-nothing-misleading\/","title":{"rendered":"SiriusXM Responds To Lawsuit Over Royalty Fee: ‘Nothing Misleading’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tS<\/span>iriusXM wants a federal judge to dismiss a class action claiming the company earns billions by foisting a deceptive \u201croyalty fee\u201d on subscribers, arguing there\u2019s \u201cnothing misleading\u201d about its pricing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit, filed in federal court last year, claims that SiriusXM adds a huge \u201cU.S. Music Royalty Fee\u201d onto the advertised price \u2014 an \u201cinvented\u201d charge with a deceptive name designed to falsely make consumers think that it\u2019s mandated by the government to pay for music rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a Monday response, attorneys for the satcaster argue that the company \u201cprominently and repeatedly\u201d discloses all fees that consumers face before they purchase their subscription, including a base price and \u201ctaxes and fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is nothing misleading about Sirius XM\u2019s practices,\u201d the company\u2019s attorneys say. \u201cEvery piece of information which plaintiffs say Sirius XM attempted to \u2018conceal\u2019 is and has always been out in the open. Plaintiffs were told what they had to pay if they wanted their music plans, and they received what they paid for\u2014as contemplated by every statement exchanged between Sirius XM and its customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case, filed in June by four aggrieved SiriusXM customers who say they want to represent millions of other subscribers, claims that the Royalty Fee amounts to 21.4% of the original price \u2013 netting the company a whopping $1.36 billion in 2023 alone. The accusers say the fee itself is not illegal, but that it needs to be clearly advertised and explained to potential buyers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis action challenges a deceptive pricing scheme whereby SiriusXM falsely advertises its music plans at lower prices than it actually charges,\u201d attorneys for plaintiffs wrote at the time. \u201cSiriusXM intentionally does not disclose the fee to its subscribers. SiriusXM even goes so far as to not mention the words \u2018U.S. Music Royalty Fee\u2019 in any of its advertising, including in the fine print.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe name of the fee aims to make it sound important and official, the lawsuit claimed, but it\u2019s really just a \u201cdisguised double charge for the music plan itself\u201d that no other competing music services imposes on their users as an additional fee on top of the actual price.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cReasonable consumers would expect that the advertised price for SiriusXM\u2019s music plans would include the fundamental costs of obtaining the permissions necessary to provide the music content that SiriusXM has promised is included in those plans,\u201d lawyers for the subscribers wrote in their complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Monday\u2019s response, Sirius said there was nothing misleading about the name of the fee, which they say \u201coffsets royalties payable to holders of copyrights in sound records and holders of copyrights in musical compositions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSirius XM has done exactly what it said it would do: charge a monthly price for music subscriptions, plus \u2018fees and taxes,\u2019 for a prominently and repeatedly disclosed total price that is the sum of the two,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cAnd the fee Sirius XM charges is exactly what its name suggests: one to cover the royalty expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys for the plaintiffs will file a response in the weeks ahead, and then a judge will rule on SiriusXM\u2019s motion at some point in the next few months. If denied, the case will proceed toward an eventual trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SiriusXM wants a federal judge to dismiss a class action claiming the company earns billions by foisting a deceptive \u201croyalty fee\u201d on subscribers, arguing there\u2019s \u201cnothing misleading\u201d about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[717,303,1593,1530,1936,2196],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-fee","tag-lawsuit","tag-misleading","tag-responds","tag-royalty","tag-siriusxm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","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=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}