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Universal Music Group, the largest major-label conglomerate in existence, has joined forces with ABKCO Music & Records and Concord Music Group to file a huge copyright-infringement lawsuit against Believe SAS, the digital music company formerly known as Believe Music, and its subsidiary TuneCore. As Music Business Worldwide reports, UMG accuses Believe and TuneCore of “industrial-scale copyright infringement,” and it’s seeking $500 million in damages.
The Brooklyn-based company TuneCore is widely known as one of the easiest routes that independent artists can use to get their music distributed to various streaming services and online platforms. The company launched in 2006, and Frank Black was its first client. Believe acquired TuneCore in 2015. Now, UMG accuses TuneCore of serving as a hub for sped-up bootleg versions of copyrighted songs. (That’s mega-powerful UMG chairman and CEO Lucian Grange pictured above, by the way. He doesn’t exactly have the world’s most interesting face, but I figured that would make a better graphic than any of these companies’ logos.)
UMG and those other companies filed their lawsuit in federal court on Monday, and it claims that Believe has distributed “millions” of slightly altered versions of major-label songs to streaming and video platforms, sometimes credited to artists with names like “Kendrik Laamar” or “Arriana Gramde.” (Arriana Gramde has yet to respond to these accusations.) According to the lawsuit, Believe has done little to prevent the spread of these copyright violations, allowing users to evade YouTube’s content-identification system. The lawsuit says:
As the distributor of these tracks, Believe had specific knowledge of infringement or, at minimum, was actually aware of facts indicating a high likelihood of infringement, but continued to distribute and purport to license the same tracks to other services, continuing to violate Plaintiffs’ copyrights and to divert royalties that ought to have flowed to Plaintiffs.
Music Business Worldwide notes that TuneCore, like its competitor DistroKid, has a terms-and-conditions clause forcing users to accept blame for any copyright violations. That’s evidently not good enough for UMG. A company spokesperson has this to say:
Believe is a company built on industrial-scale copyright infringement. Their illegal practices are not limited to cheating artists on major labels but artists on independent labels as well — including artists on the independent labels within the trade bodies of which Believe is itself a member.
Four years ago, publisher Round Hill Music hit Believe with a similar lawsuit, claiming that Believe distributed songs owned by Round Hill. That lawsuit was later settled.