Music Companies Make Most of Their Money From Big Tech Now – Twitter Sued For Millions

Twitter is in trouble again, this time with the music industry. On Wednesday, a group of 17 music publishers sued the social media platform, alleging that it had violated the copyright to around 1,700 songs. As such, the plaintiffs are requesting up to $250 million in damages

NMPA $150,000 Per Song in Damages

According to the National Music Publishers’ Association, Twitter has consistently violated copyright laws by allowing users to post content with music to the platform without their consent.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, NMPA accused the platform of “wilful copyright infringement” and is seeking a court declaration that Twitter admittedly infringed on the songs.

Additionally, the association, which includes Sony Music, BMG Rights Management, and Universal Music Publishing Group, is also seeking up to $150,000 in damages for every song on the list.

In a statement, NMPA President David Israelite said that Twitter “stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service.”

The lawsuit claimed that Twitter routinely ignores repeat infringers who put out content containing unlicensed music. The publishers further claimed that Twitter encourages user infringement, giving it an unfair advantage over platforms that purchase music licenses by raising engagement and ad revenues.

The publishers pointed out specific tweets where music was used without permission, including one about Rihanna’s song “Umbrella” that featured, as stated in the lawsuit, two minutes of the song’s music video. The lawsuit argued that even though the post received 15,000 likes and 221,000 views, the song’s publishers had not granted their approval.

Prior to filing this lawsuit, the publishers had reportedly made attempts to reach Twitter about infringement in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s protocol. In the suit, NMPA allegedly informed Twitter of nearly 300,000 messages since December 2021 that contained copyrighted music.

Instead, the firm habitually ignored or postponed responding to the notices and significant reductions to the company’s legal and trust and safety arms have gotten worse since Musk took control last October.

This lawsuit would have seemingly been avoided since reports from unnamed sources say that the company had been exploring the licensing of music rights from three major labels. However, these efforts ceased when Elon Musk acquired the company.

The Music Industry Reaps Heavily From Tech Companies

Unlike Twitter, companies such as YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok all have agreements with publishers which lead to billions of dollars in licensing for users to post content with music.

For instance, YouTube, the largest music streaming service in the world, revealed that between July 2021 and June 2022, it paid the music industry more than $6 billion. Moreover, the company had paid $4 billion the previous year for music licensing.

On the other hand, Meta reportedly pays out hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the music licenses that allowed users of its social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, to incorporate music into their reels and videos.

Another platform that pays out billions to publishers is Spotify which revealed in March that all-time payouts to music-rights holders are approaching $40 billion. Notably, this is aside from royalties earned for the number of listens per song.

While the figure is not known, it is without a doubt that TikTok also pays billions for music licensing seeing as most of its users’ content is videos with music.

Many other companies including Amazon-owned Twitch, Roblox and Peloton have also recently decided to reach a settlement with the NMPA over music copyright for millions of dollars.

Despite Twitter’s content being mainly text-based, the costs of the licenses can be well over $100 million a year for established social-media platforms. For this reason, Twitter chose to forego the licensing deals.

As Twitter awaits the allegations to play out in court, there is a chance that the company may end up paying more in damages than it would for a license.

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