📑 CMU Digest: Live Nation antitrust push back + sheet music wars in court

CMU Digest is our weekly round-up of the most interesting music business news stories from the last seven days.

This week: Live Nation hits back at the US government’s antitrust lawsuit, criticising allegations about a ‘tying arrangement’ and violations of state-level laws. The music industry welcomes the COPIED Act, yet more proposals for AI regulation in US Congress. Verizon is the latest US internet service provider to be sued by the major record companies. Both Kanye West and Snoop Dogg have been sued over unlicensed samples and beats. Sheet music wars as Wise Music and Hal Leonard fight it out in the London high court over a 2018 licensing agreement.

ICMYI: Music industry responds to UK government’s king’s speech; StubHub’s IPO plans postponed; ERA figures show UK vinyl and CD sales continue to grow; EU court says TikTok is a ‘gatekeeper’ subject to extra regulation; Margate’s Dreamland faces new licensing obligations; South Korean prosecutors want to arrest Kakao founder over SM Entertainment stock manipulation allegations.

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Live Nation hits back at the US government’s antitrust lawsuit.

The live giant’s lawyers sent a letter to the court overseeing the lawsuit filed by the US Department Of Justice, which accuses Live Nation of anticompetitive conduct and aims to force a sale of its Ticketmaster business. The new letter sets out some key issues which the lawyers plan to raise in a future motion for dismissal.

It explains how the DoJ has accused Live Nation of creating an “unlawful tying arrangement” between its amphitheater venues and concert promotions business, whereby artists need to work with Live Nation’s promoters in order to use its venues. However, Live Nation argues that this is a ‘refusal to deal’ rather than a ‘tying arrangement’, and that this practice is entirely legal, because US federal law recognises the right of a company “to freely exercise its own independent discretion as to parties with whom it will deal”.

The letter also criticises allegations made in the lawsuit that Live Nation is breaching state-level laws as well as federal law. Those arguments “are threadbare and conclusory”, the lawyers argue, because they fail to say “what conduct allegedly violates the state laws in question”. Not only that, but some of the claims under state laws are barred by the statute of limitations.

The music industry welcomed the latest AI proposals in US Congress

US senators have introduced the COPIED Act, which would “set new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content” and “protect journalists, actors and artists against AI-driven theft”.

The proposed legislation would require the US National Institute Of Standards And Technology to develop new standards, and a watermarking system, to easily identify AI-generated or AI-manipulated content. It would also establish standards to allow creators and journalists to attach ‘provenance information’ to their content online, as well as prohibiting “the unauthorised use of content with provenance information to train AI models or generate AI content”.

The Recording Industry Association Of America was among the plethora of music industry groups to welcome the proposals, which would give content owners more control in the context of AI, and force more transparency obligations onto AI companies. Its CEO Mitch Glazier said the COPIED Act “would grant much needed visibility into AI development and pave the way for more ethical innovation and fair and transparent competition in the digital marketplace”.

The major record companies sued ISP Verizon for copyright infringement.

The music companies claim that they sent the internet service provider “hundreds of thousands of copyright infringement notices” in relation to the conduct of its customers. Verizon should have taken action against its infringing users, but instead “buried its head in the sand” and “continued to provide its high-speed service to thousands of known repeat infringers so it could continue to collect millions of dollars from them”.

It’s the latest in a series of lawsuits filed against US ISPs by the music industry, utilising precedent set when BMG successfully sued Cox Communications in 2015. In that case, BMG demonstrated that, by failing to deal with repeat infringers in its customer base, the ISP could be held liable for their infringement. The major record companies have since gone legal against various internet companies.

Verizon previously collaborated with the music and movie industries to combat online piracy via a Copyright Alert System in the mid-2010s. However, since that ended in 2017 the ISP has seemingly been less willing to working with rights owners.

Kanye West and Snoop Dogg were both sued over uncleared samples and beats.

West is accused of using the same unapproved sample on two tracks on his 2021 album ‘Donda’ - ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Moon’ - despite being explicitly denied permission from the owners of the sampled track, called ‘MSD PT2’. The creators of the earlier work are given co-writer credits on ‘Hurricane’. One of them, Khalil Abdul-Rahman, is also credited on ‘Moon’, and - according to the MLC database - has been allocated a small share of the copyright in West’s songs. But a lawsuit filed by Artist Revenue Advocates, which controls the earlier track, suggests none of the ‘MSD PT2’ creators have received any royalties. It also points out that - even though he has credited the other creators - West still needed their explicit permission to sample their track.

Snoop has been sued by a musician called Trevor Lawrence Jr who provided the rapper with two backing tracks “on spec” for use in the studio. However, his lawsuit insists, he was always clear that a licence would need to be negotiated if his beats were used on a commercially released track. When he found out that his beats were appearing on Snoop’s 2022 album ‘BODR’, he told the rapper’s team what his terms were, which they seemed to accept. But then they released two tracks featuring his beats without securing a licence.

Wise Music and Hal Leonard are embroiled in a sheet music legal battle.

Earlier this year Wise Music Group sued sheet music publisher Hal Leonard in the London high court. Back in 2018, Wise Music sold its own sheet music business to Hal Leonard. As part of that deal, the two companies also entered into a licensing agreement which saw Hal Leonard get the right to publish sheet music featuring compositions controlled by Wise. In its lawsuit, Wise alleges that Hal Leonard has failed to meet its obligations under that licensing agreement. To that end Wise considers the 2018 licensing agreement to be terminated.

In new legal papers obtained by CMU, Hal Leonard stated that the claims made by Wise are “unfounded”, “misconceived” and, in some cases, “vague and embarrassing”. It insisted that it has “complied with or exceeded” its obligations under the 2018 deal. It then claimed that it is actually Wise that has breached the terms of the 2018 deal, by entering into a printed music agreement with Faber Music in relation to copyrights it acquired in 2023 when it bought a controlling stake in the Edition Peters Group, when Hal Leonard should have been given the option to bid for that work first.