Sony Music Entertainment has sued Napster alleging that the streaming service owes more than $9.2 million in unpaid royalties and licensing fees, while seeking damages of as much as $37.5 million for copyright infringement.
The complaint, which you can read in full here, was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday (August 1) and focuses on Napster’s alleged continued use of copyrighted songs without authorization after contracts were terminated.
The lawsuit targets Napster’s parent companies Rhapsody International and digital media and e-commerce company Infinite Reality, which acquired the streaming platform in March via a $207 million deal.
Sony Music claims Napster has been delinquent on payments for over a year while collecting subscription fees from “millions of paying users.”
Sony Music’s complaint said: “When companies exploit Sony Music’s sound recordings for commercial benefit without authorization, this not only harms Sony Music by depriving it of compensation, but it also reduces the incentive to invest in the creation and dissemination of new music.”
The lawsuit cited four licensing agreements that allowed Napster to stream Sony Music’s catalog of recordings. According to the 17-page court document, Napster accumulated $6.79 million in overdue payments by March 5, 2025 across three of the contracts.
“When companies exploit Sony Music’s sound recordings for commercial benefit without authorization, this not only harms Sony Music by depriving it of compensation, but it also reduces the incentive to invest in the creation and dissemination of new music.”
Sony Music’s Legal Team
When factoring in subsequent missed payments and fees from a fourth agreement, the total reached $9.2 million, Sony said.
Sony Music’s legal team wrote: “For over a year, Defendants have failed to pay Plaintiffs the license fees and royalty payments as required by the Foundation Media Content License Agreement, Orchard Content License Agreement, Content Integration Agreement, and Framework Agreement—all while Defendants continued to collect subscription fees from their millions of paying users.”
When Napster’s parent company agreed to sell the platform to Infinite Reality in November 2024, Sony Music said the deal would trigger its right to terminate its agreements with Napster, “which would deprive [Napster’s parent] Rhapsody of the ability to stream Plaintiffs’ valuable sound recordings.”
However, Sony Music agreed to waive termination rights tied to Napster’s ownership change in exchange for a payment plan. Under the March 5, 2025, arrangement, Napster would pay the outstanding balance in four installments, with the first due 15 days after the acquisition closed and subsequent payments through January 2026.
“Despite that termination, Defendants have continued to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and otherwise exploit Sony Music Entertainment’s sound recordings on Napster, without any legal right to do so.”
Sony Music’s Legal Team
Sony Music’s legal representatives alleges that Napster failed to make any scheduled payments. As a result, Sony Music and its affiliates Orchard Enterprises NY, Foundation Media and Sony Music Entertainment Brasil terminated Napster’s licenses to use Sony Music’s sound recordings on Napster in June and July 2025.
They wrote: “Despite that termination, Defendants have continued to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and otherwise exploit Sony Music Entertainment’s sound recordings on Napster, without any legal right to do so.”
Sony’s attorneys added: “Defendants’ exploitation of Plaintiffs’ valuable intellectual property without compensation to Plaintiffs has caused Plaintiffs substantial harm. Accordingly, Plaintiffs bring this action to recover the millions of dollars Defendants owe to Plaintiffs under the parties’ agreements, as well as to seek relief for Defendants’ willful infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”
Sony is seeking damages for breach of contract up to $150,000 per infringed work, citing 240 tracks from artists including Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus that were allegedly used without authorization. This could potentially result in up to $37.5 million in damages for the infringed songs.
The lawsuit marks another legal challenge for Napster, which was also sued, alongside Sonos, by SoundExchange in June over more than $3.4 million in unpaid copyright royalties tied to the Sonos Radio streaming service that operated from 2020 to 2023.
SoundExchange’s lawyers wrote: “Sonos and Napster have made certain payments that fall far short of their obligations. In total, Sonos, and its agent Napster, have failed to pay at least $3,423,844.41 comprising royalties owed for the period October 2022 to April 2023, interest, late fees, and auditor fee-shifting costs, and subtracting Sonos and Napster’s payments made to date. Late fees and interest continue to grow.”
In January, Billboard reported that Napster had been making late royalty payments to multiple distributors and labels, sometimes by as much as a year.
Napster, which claims to be the longest-operating digital music service, was acquired by tech startup Infinite Reality in a $207 million deal in March. The acquisition arrived a few weeks after Infinite Reality closed a $3 billion funding round from a private investor, valuing the company at $12.25 billion.
Infinite Reality is backed by investors including notable individuals such as Steve Aoki, Imagine Dragons, NBA player Rudy Gobert, and tennis player Taylor Fritz.
For Sony Music, the Napster case is among the latest lawsuits that the music giant has lodged in recent months. In March, the company sued the University of Southern California (USC), alleging the school repeatedly and willfully used unauthorized copyrighted music in its social media posts.
In June last year, Sony, along with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, sued AI startups Suno and Udio in the US for allegedly training their systems using the majors’ recordings without permission – an accusation they pretty much admitted to in court filings last August.
Meanwhile in February, Sony won a lawsuit against Patrick Moxey’s independent publishing company, Ultra International Music Publishing. A federal judge in New York ordered Moxey’s firm to change its name to something other than “Ultra” after Sony ended its agreement to license the Ultra name to Moxey in March 2022.
Music Business Worldwide
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