Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has filed an antitrust lawsuit against some 18 music publishers and their trade organization, the National Music Publishers Association, in the latest move in a drawn-out battle over licensing. The platform alleges that the companies and NMPA colluded in order to coerce X into purchasing industrywide licenses, without which the platform cannot legally host many thousands of songs.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, alleges that the companies and NMPA attempted to “leverage monopoly power” to compel X into acquiring licenses from all music publishers at unfairly high rates, and “conspired to leverage their combined market power,” the suit says, “and coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the industry as a whole, denying X the benefit of competition between music publishers.” X claims that it is being prevented from negotiating deals with individual publishers; the lawsuit seeks a court order granting it that right, as well as unspecified damages.
The three largest music publishers — Sony, Universal and Warner — were among the companies named in the suit.
The move is the latest in a long battle between X and the publishers over licenses, which includes a 2023 lawsuit against X by NMPA. The two sides nearly came to terms last November but did not close the deal, although as recently as November 25 they claimed to “have made very substantial progress toward settlement and worked on a written settlement agreement.”
“X/Twitter is the only major social media company that does not license the songs on its platform,” says NMPA president-CEO David Israelite. “We allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a bad faith effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ legitimate right to enforce against X’s illegal use of their songs.”
The dispute is a familiar one, as many emerging platforms, from TikTok to Twitch to Triller, attempted to sidestep or reduce their licensing fees, only to be met with aggressive lawsuits from NMPA and other publishers that have usually resulted in deals being struck.
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