In today's CMU Daily: Wise Music Group and Hal Leonard are involved in a legal bust up over a 2018 licensing agreement. Wise says Hal Leonard hasn’t done enough to sell sheet music publications featuring its compositions - and therefore that agreement is terminated. Hal Leonard disagrees, and in a new legal filing calls Wise’s claims “unfounded”, “misconceived”, “vague and embarrassing”

One Liners: Bucks Music x Little Barrie, Inverted Music x John Mills-Cockel, Morgan Wallen management deal, Round Hill x Brandon Day, Irruk Birruk, RCA x BERWYN, InsideOutMusic x Jakub Zytecki, Muse Group appointments, a legal and live round-up + latest releases 

Also today: Verizon is the latest US ISP to be sued by the major record companies; Dice in talks with private equity firms about them buying into the ticketing company; music industry welcomes latest proposals in US Congress to regulate generative AI

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Hal Leonard hits back at Wise Music in sheet music licensing dispute 

Earlier this year music publisher Wise Music Group filed papers in the High Court in London suing sheet music publisher Hal Leonard in a dispute over a 2018 licensing agreement. 

Wise argued that Hal Leonardhadfailed to meet its obligations under the 2018 agreement and “refused to accept any change was required”. Hal Leonard was being “disingenuous”, it added, and “has no interest in addressing the issues with the performance of its obligations”.

As a result, Wise terminated the agreement. But, according to legal papers obtained by CMU, Hal Leonard “refused to accept the validity of the termination”, and so Wise asked the court to agree that its actions to end the agreement are valid. Hal Leonard has now formally responded, and in its own counterfiling insists that the claims made by Wise are “unfounded”, “misconceived” and, in some cases, “vague and embarrassing”.

Wise Music Group, then known as Music Sales Group, sold its own sheet music business to Hal Leonard in 2018, allowing it to focus on the expansion, management and administration of its various song catalogues. Owner Robert Wise said at the time that, while “printed music has played a special role in the long history of Music Sales”, the company's “direction of travel has been very clear in recent years as we continue the expansion of our portfolio of copyrights in all styles and genres across the world”. 

Alongside the sale of the sheet music business, Wise and Hal Leonard also entered into the licensing agreement that forms the substance of the legal dispute. 

Under that deal, Hal Leonard would have the right to print, publish and sell sheet music featuring compositions owned or controlled by Wise, paying royalties on any publications sold. Hal Leonard was obliged to employ “reasonable efforts” to promote and sell sheet music featuring Wise-controlled compositions. Those efforts, said the contract, should be “no less than” the sales effort that Hal Leonard made “in respect of its other publications”.

In its lawsuit, Wise argues that Hal Leonard’s efforts in relation to its catalogue have not been reasonable. Its business partner didn't take “sufficient steps” to make publications available digitally, despite the fact “the demand for printed music in digital formats, relative to physical formats, has been increasing for several years”. The legal filing cites minutes from a meeting in June 2021 that, it says, record Hal Leonard apologising for a “massive delay” to making various works available and that it “promised to do better”.

Sentric Music // Revenue Optimisation Manager (London/Liverpool)

Sentric Music // Copyright Manager (Liverpool/London)

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ONE LINERS

Deals, Appointments, Legal, Live Business, Tours + Releases

DEALS

Bucks Music Group has signed Little Barrie to an exclusive worldwide administration and sync services deal, encompassing six studio albums and future works. 

Inverted Music UK has acquired the complete catalogue of electronic music pioneer John Mills-Cockell, expanding on a previous admin deal. 

Morgan Wallen and booking agent Austin Neal have launched Sticks Management, with Wallen as the sole client. 

Round Hill Music has signed songwriter and producer Brandon Day to an exclusive publishing deal. 

Universal Music Australia has launched Irruk Birruk, a not-for-profit label distributing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music globally, in partnership with Linc YowYeh and artist Briggs. 

Sony Music’s RCA Records has signed London-based rapper BERWYN in the US in preparation for his debut album release ‘WHO AM I’. 

Polish guitarist Jakub Zytecki, formerly of prog rock band Disperse, has signed with InsideOutMusic. 

APPOINTMENTS

Muse Group, the company behind popular music creation tools MuseScore, Ultimate Guitar and Audacity, has announced three key executive appointments. Debbie Diekelman joins as CFO, Sven Ahrens as Chief Growth Officer and Mohammed "Mo" Chahdi as COO.

LEGAL

Source Music has filed a 500 million won ($361,328) lawsuit against ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin for alleged defamation and business disruption affecting girl group Le Sserafim. 

Wiz Khalifa was arrested for drug possession at Romania’s Beach Please! Festival on Saturday, 13 Jul, after allegedly smoking cannabis on stage. 

Julian Koster, bassist for indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, has been accused of sexual assault and grooming by musician Anna “Nesey” Gallons. 

LIVE

Pohoda Festival in Slovakia ended prematurely after a severe storm caused a tent collapse on Friday night, injuring 29 people. 

TOURS + RELEASES

Click here for today’s releases + tour updates including: Hak Baker, SG Lewis, Ice Spice x Central Cee, Metronomy, BERWYN, Marc Rebillet, LL COOL J, Eminem, Babyface Ray x Peezy, Common x Pete Rock, Bob Dylan tour + more

Verizon is latest ISP to be sued by the major record companies 

Verizon is the latest US internet service provider to be sued by the major record companies for not doing enough to deal with repeat copyright infringers among its customer base. Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music all want Verizon to be held liable for its users’ copyright infringement. 

Between them, the majors say, they have sent Verizon “hundreds of thousands of copyright infringement notices”. These notices identified specific Verizon customers who have repeatedly infringed the music companies’ copyrights through online file-sharing. 

The ISP, say the majors, should have dealt with those repeat infringers but instead it “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 is well-established law that if a party materially assists someone it knows is engaging in copyright infringement, that party is fully liable for the infringement as if it had infringed directly”, the lawsuit continues. To that end, Verizon should be held liable for its users’ infringement and therefore pay mega-damages to the music companies. 

With private equity interest in live music growing, could a deal to buy Dice be on the cards? 

Three private equity firms are in talks to buy a significant stake in ticketing company Dice, according to sources who have spoken to Bloomberg. 

Dice has reportedly initiated formal talks with possible investors after being approached by an interested buyer. One of the company’s biggest current investors, Softbank, is reportedly keen to sell its stake. Any deal would value the Dice business at hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The live music business went through two years of unprecedented challenges during the COVID pandemic, of course. However, since then, when it comes to large-scale shows and venues, the sector has very much bounced back. Which has resulted in renewed interest in the live entertainment market among investors. 

As proof of that renewed interest, Bloomberg’s report notes KKR’s recent acquisition of festivals business Superstruct and Goldman Sachs acquiring a majority stake in live event production company TAIT. Although in both those cases, a private equity company was also the seller. Indeed it was the same private equity company, Providence Equity Partners. 

As well as KKR, CVC Capital Partners, Blackstone and EQT are all known to be pursuing deals in live entertainment, with a recent deep-dive from IQ Magazine charting the increasingly close links between live music and private equity. 

US Senators propose COPIED Act to rein in AI's “theft” of creative content

US senators have proposed yet more new legislation to regulate generative AI, with music industry trade organisations welcoming the move. The COPIED Act would “set new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content” and “protect journalists, actors and artists against AI-driven theft”. 

“Artificial intelligence has given bad actors the ability to create deepfakes of every individual, including those in the creative community, to imitate their likeness without their consent and profit off of counterfeit content”, says Marsha Blackburn, one of the senators sponsoring the bill. “The COPIED Act takes an important step to better defend common targets like artists and performers against deepfakes and other inauthentic content”. 

Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association Of America, voiced his support for the bill saying, “Leading tech companies refuse to share basic data about the creation and training of their models as they profit from copying and using unlicensed copyrighted material to generate synthetic recordings that unfairly compete with original works”. He added that 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 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.