Funny man Weird Al Yankovic is not amused with his record company Sony who he is accusing of financial funny business holding out on royalties from digital downloads and other financial windfalls.
According to Billboard, Yankovic and his company Ear Booker Enterprises, is suing Sony Music Entertainment for $5 million, claiming “improper and duplicate recoupments” which resulted in royalty under payments.
Yankovic also alleges that Sony is only paying a royalty for download sales instead of the 50% he is owed under a licensing deal he has with the record company. He also wants to see some of the action from huge financial payouts Sony received from lawsuit settlements with Napster, Kazaa, and Grokster.
But that isn’t the only piece of the action Yankovic is looking to get his hands on. His lawsuit also points out that Sony Music received an equity stake in Youtube in exchange for providing music videos on the popular video service.
At the time Sony was given the equity stake Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy” video was one of the most popular videos on Youtube. “A portion of Sony’s equity share in YouTube is directly apportionable and allocable to “White & Nerdy,” claims the suit with Yankovic looking for money from the video service in compensation for the millions of views he receives every month.
“White & Nerdy” has since racked up nearly 70 million views but Yankovic hasn’t seen a cent in compensation for what he sees as distribution of his music.
But the real major contentious point here is what exactly is a download. Are downloads sales and be treated the same as sales of CDs through the payment of royalties? Or is a downloaded song being licensed to the user meaning the record company should be paying artists a licensing fee?
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Ironically enough the discrepancy was first brought up by the record companies themselves, who have tried to argue in court that they simply license music to the end user and therefore the public have no right to copy the song onto multiple devices. Funny how things turn out.
The case also has precedent. One of the lawyers working with Weird Al was also involved in a similar lawsuit with Eminem against his record company.
In that lawsuit is was determined that digital sales should be treated as licenses, and therefore artists should get a 50% cut of the proceeds – a significant jump from royalty payments artists have been receiving for years for physical sales which often max out at 12%.
Of course record companies have since got wise to the digital realm and new signings have explicit language set out in their contracts so artists can’t claim 50% later on. But artists who have signed contracts prior to the new millenium look set to reap millions from litigation. And the lawyers know it.
One such lawyer, Richard Busch, has successfully sued Universal Music Group for treating downloads as a sale instead of a license and has since filed lawsuits on this point on behalf of Peter Frampton, Kenny Rogers and the estate of late Knack drummer Bruce Gary.
So expect to hear much more on this in the future.
