#album-rights

#album-rights

On Tuesday, a day after the Justice Department revealed in court it had reached a settlement with Live Nation that a handful of states had agreed to, Judge Arun Subramanian held a hearing on the future of the case. He ordered Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, DOJ Antitrust Division acting chief Omeed Assefi, and representatives of states that hadn't settled to stay at the Manhattan courthouse and attempt to reach a broader deal.

Today, the concert ticket industry is broken, in fact the concert industry itself is broken. It is controlled by a monopolist. It is controlled by Live Nation. Ticketmaster keeps more in fees than competitors such as AXS, according to an expert's estimate cited by Jonathan Hatch, an attorney for New York state.

Of the $43.9 billion that advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend on creator marketing in 2026, most of that money - 55% - will go towards ads amplifying the creators' content, not to the actual creation and posting of content by the creators themselves. And that spend is only increasing as creator content becomes a more popular choice for ad creative and paid amplification provides brands with the analytics to be able to more effectively gauge the impact of creators' content.

For years now, actors have rung the alarm bells over the AI industry planning to sell their likeness and voices - either with or without their consent - and hence threatening to put them out of work. Beyond a major 2023 strike by Hollywood actors fueled by these concerns, we've already seen actors take matters into their own hands, like when Scarlett Johansson threatened to sue OpenAI over a ChatGPT update that she claims imitated her voice.

WBD has failed to include any disclosure about how it valued the Global Networks stub equity, how it valued the overall Netflix transaction, how the purchase price reduction for debt works in the Netflix transaction, or even what the basis is for its 'risk adjustment' of our $30 per share all-cash offer,

Lost International argued that while the album itself might be expressive, putting the word 'Mayhem' on t-shirts and hoodies shifted the use from artistic expression to source identification. The court rejected this 'disaggregation,' citing precedent from Twentieth Century Fox v. Empire Distribution, which extends First Amendment protection to auxiliary, revenue-generating promotional activities—including merchandise.

As of today, I am no longer represented by Wasserman, the talent agency led by Casey Wasserman,

In an audacious action starting to attract media attention, last month a group of piracy actors called Anna's Archive copied about 86 million music files from Spotify. The intention was to release the hoard on the BitTorrent file-sharing platform. All three of the major labels (UMG, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group), along with Spotify, launched the unsurprising lawsuit in September. The presiding judge, Jed . Rakoff, issued an injunction (HERE).

The woman claims that the audio recordings were made in 2018 at the request of the singer's producer, La Paciencia, whose real name is Roberto Rosado. The woman claims that she was not notified that they would be used in the artist's upcoming music. At the time of the request, the purpose of the audio was not explained. Nor was the plaintiff informed that her identity would be used and commercially exploited.

In a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter on Tuesday (20 January), 33-year-old "Broken" singer Kim Petras stated that she had officially asked to be dropped by her record label Republic Records, a brand owned by Universal Music. "I'm tired of having no control over my own life or career. I want to continue to self fund and self curate my own music. This is why I have formally requested to be dropped by @RepublicRecords," Petras wrote.

As 2025 fades into the rearview mirror, many of the entertainment and media industry's biggest legal questions remain unresolved. In this episode of The Briefing, Weintraub Tobin partners Scott Hervey and Tara Sattler take a forward-looking approach to the cases and doctrines that could shape 2026. In this episode, they cover: The unsettled future of fair use in AI training and copyright infringement How courts are approaching lawful versus unlawful acquisition of training data The growing split in AI cases involving market substitution and fair use