Global Music Rights Sues Vermont Radio Station Group For ‘Willful Infringement’

Global Music Rights, the performing rights organization which represents the works of numerous songwriters and composers, filed a lawsuit January 18 against Vermont Broadcast Associates for what GMR says is “the station group’s repeated and willful infringement of copyrighted songs licensed by GMR.”

GMR says it identified over 1,600 instances of willful infringement by VBA.

GMR was founded in 2013 by Irving Azoff, also a co-founder of Oak View Group, Pollstar‘s parent company.

In 2016, the American radio industry’s licensing entity, the Radio Music License Committee, of which VBA is a member, sued GMR, which responded with a countersuit. GMR and RMLC settled those suits in 2022, with GMR offering long-term licenses to all U.S. radio stations, including those owned by VBA, on terms agreed upon in the settlement.

The overwhelming majority of RMLC’s members accepted those terms, though GMR says VBA “ignored communications and chose not to enter into a GMR license but continued to brazenly perform songs controlled by CMR.”

GMR says it not only offered the license to VBA, but sent a cease-and-desist letter and infringement notices prior to filing the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Vermont.

“While we only turn to litigation as a last resort, it is long established U.S. law that GMR’s clients’ copyrighted works cannot be publicly performed without a license. All the radio stations that have entered into a GMR license and are paying their fees deserve the benefit of that license,” GMR’s General Counsel, Emio Zizza, said in a statement. “Station groups who don’t want to pay for a GMR license are not entitled to play GMR’s immensely popular catalog of songs, depriving creators of their due.”