Music industry launches battle against Twitter, sues social network for $250 million

The National Music Publishers Association filed a lawsuit against the platform for the "huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music."

Published by

Rosana Rábago Sainz

15 de junio, 2023

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The music industry launched a battle against Twitter on Thursday. It did so by filing a lawsuit against the social network for $250 million, citing that the platform "reap[s] huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music without paying the necessary licensing fees."

It was the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) that filed the multi-million dollar lawsuit. The organization, which groups some 17 record labels, including Universal Music and Sony Music, said Twitter has repeatedly infringed upon the copyrights of several songwriters by "allowing and encouraging infringement, including infringement of publishers' musical compositions."

According to the document, as a result of this, the platform benefited from some 1,700 music tracks, including some created by artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Rosalía, Ariana Grande and Bad Bunny, among many others.

NMPA CEO in pursuit of a deal with Twitter

The fight has been going on for several years. However, the NMPA decided to file the lawsuit against the platform because, the association alleges, they detected an increase in the practice of this infringement, which aggravated the problem they had already detected with copyrights. This was explained by the association's CEO, David Israelite:

Twitter's change in ownership in October 2022 has not led to improvements in how it acts with respect to copyright. On the contrary, Twitter's internal affairs regarding matters pertinent to this case are in disarray. Twitter is well aware that billions of people filter, release and stream music every day on its platform. It can no longer hide behind the DMCA and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.

At this time, Twitter has not commented on the lawsuit or reached any type of agreement with the NMPA. The lawsuit could be a starting point, although Israelite is confident that he can reach an agreement with the new CEO of the social network, Linda Yaccarino, as he assured on his Twitter profile a few weeks ago: