Songwriters Sue Over Royalties

Los Angeles songwriter Michelle Lewis and Songwriters of North America, an advocacy group she helped form a year ago, sued the U.S. Justice Dept. and others over a ruling that ASCAP and BMI must change their licensing procedures to ensure “100 percent licensing.”

Lewis, the SNA, and songwriters Tom Kelly and Pam Sheyne filed the suit against the DOJ, Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and Renata Hess, who oversees the department’s antitrust division, alleging the agency overstepped its authority and its ruling potentially nullifies private agreements between collaborating songwriters, according to the New York Times.

The ruling requires all rights organizations to have legal clearance on every part of a song – and thus a deal with every writer, which is not always the case – or remove those songs from their catalogs. Radio broadcasters, music streaming companies such as Pandora, and businesses that play piped-in music, like grocery stores, have long paid royalties to PROs like ASCAP and BMI to cover payments to songwriters and publishers, to the tune of some $2 billion per year.

Music industry groups complain the ruling disrupts decades of practice. Collaborating songwriters may not necessarily belong to the same PROs, making broadcasters and others have to deals in place with multiple organizations to ensure they have broad coverage. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the ruling is unlawful. “The 100 percent mandate is an illegitimate assertion of agency power in gross violation of plaintiffs’ due process rights, copyright interests and freedom of contacts, and needs to be set aside,” the suit reads, according to the Times.

BMI reportedly will challenge the rule as well.

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