{"id":9486,"date":"2026-01-12T06:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T06:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/elon-musks-x-sues-music-publishers-for-collusion-in-antitrust-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T06:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T06:11:16","slug":"elon-musks-x-sues-music-publishers-for-collusion-in-antitrust-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/elon-musks-x-sues-music-publishers-for-collusion-in-antitrust-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk’s X Sues Music Publishers for Collusion in Antitrust Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tElon Musk<\/strong>\u2019s X is suing the major music publishers and the National Music Publishers\u2019 Association (NMPA) over allegations that they \u201cweaponized\u201d takedown requests and exploited their monopoly power to force the social media platform to license music at jacked-up rates.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a blockbuster lawsuit filed Friday (Jan. 9), lawyers for X (formerly Twitter) accused publishing units of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment of violating federal antitrust laws by colluding against the site in an illegal conspiracy.<\/p>\n

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\n\tX\u2019s attorneys claim the plan was orchestrated by the NMPA and its president\/CEO David Israelite<\/strong>, who they say personally threatened to \u201cinundate\u201d the company with takedown notices if it didn\u2019t agree to his terms \u2014 and then did so when X refused to play ball.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe music publishers collude, rather than compete, to attempt to force X to take industrywide licenses, harming not just consumers and X users \u2026 but also X, which suffers ongoing harm from defendants\u2019 coordinated and coercive campaign,\u201d the suit reads.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em>, Israelite said that X is the \u201conly major social media company\u201d that doesn\u2019t license the songs on its platform. \u201cWe allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a bad faith effort to distract from publishers\u2019 and songwriters\u2019 legitimate right to enforce against X\u2019s illegal use of their songs,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for all three majors did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new case comes more than two years after the publishers filed their own suit against X, which has long held out against licensing music directly. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have all entered into such deals, giving users a licensed library of songs to add to their videos.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat case claimed that users on X, operating without such a license, had infringed more than 1,700 songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyonc\u00e9 \u2014 claims that could lead to $255 million in damages. In 2024, a judge refused to dismiss the case and allowed it to move ahead toward trial. Though the case was recently paused for talks, it resumed in November after the sides said they were \u201cunable to complete a settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Friday, X turned the tables with an aggressive legal counter-punch, accusing the NMPA and the publishers of sweeping antitrust violations by working together against the site in a \u201cconspiracy to leverage collective monopoly power.\u201d It claims that the defendants in the case represent 90 percent of the market for musical compositions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRather than engage in a competitive process and individually negotiate a license for their catalogs, the music publishers colluded through NMPA in a concerted refusal to deal with X independently,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo implement that alleged scheme, X says the publishers \u201cweaponized\u201d the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the federal law that governs takedown requests to social media sites. According to the suit, Israelite warned the company in an email that, if it did not take a blanket license, he would send such notices \u201con a scale larger than any previous effort in DMCA history.\u201d He allegedly warned that such an action would turn X\u2019s most popular users into \u201crepeat infringers,\u201d whom sites are required by law to terminate. \u201cNMPA also made clear that X could make this all go away \u2014 for a price.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the platform refused to cooperate, it says NMPA made good on its threats, sending more than 200,000 takedown requests in the first year alone, many for posts \u201cnot subject to any legitimate claim of infringement.\u201d X says those efforts continue to this day.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause X has resisted defendants\u2019 attempt to force it to buy industrywide licenses it does not need, it continues to be buried in hundreds of pages of takedown notices nearly every week,\u201d the site\u2019s lawyers claim.<\/p>\n

\n\tFriday\u2019s lawsuit makes explicit what X has long shown through its actions: That it does not believe it needs to take the same kind of blanket license as TikTok and Instagram. To make that case, it cites the DMCA\u2019s so-called safe harbor, which shields digital platforms from liability for illegal materials uploaded by their users, so long as such content is promptly removed when it\u2019s flagged.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the modern internet ecosystem, most major social media platforms have decided they\u2019d rather have licensed libraries of music as a perk for their users and as a means of avoiding endless takedown fights. But X says such an approach is a market choice, not a legal requirement.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA platform \u2026 does not need to license all the copyrighted musical works that its users may post and instead may choose to rely on the statutory safe harbor,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write, \u201cX \u2014 which has instituted a robust DMCA-compliance policy \u2014 has long relied on the safe harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to publishing units of the three majors, the suit also names as defendants many prominent independent publishers, including Concord Music, Downtown Music, Kobalt Music, Reservoir Music and Wixen Music.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Elon Musk\u2019s X is suing the major music publishers and the National Music Publishers\u2019 Association (NMPA) over allegations that they \u201cweaponized\u201d takedown requests and exploited their monopoly power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[358,2667,508,303,593,5008,2220,479],"class_list":["post-9486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-antitrust","tag-collusion","tag-elon","tag-lawsuit","tag-music","tag-musks","tag-publishers","tag-sues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9486","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=9486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}