By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s X Corp sued 18 major music publishers and a leading U.S. music industry trade association on Friday, alleging they conspired to block competition and force the social media platform to purchase licenses for musical works at inflated rates.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Texas, accused the National Music Publishers’ Association, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Chappell and other music publishers of violating federal antitrust law by refusing to negotiate individual licensing deals with X.
“X has been denied the ability to acquire a U.S. musical-composition license from any individual music publisher on competitive terms,” the lawsuit said.
David Israelite, the president and chief executive officer of the National Music Publishers’ Association, said in a statement that X is the only major social media company that does not license the songs on its platform.
“We allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a bad faith effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ legitimate right to enforce against X’s illegal use of their songs,” Israelite said.
Sony Music referred Reuters to the association’s statement and declined further comment. Universal Music and Warner Chappell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. X did not immediately respond to a similar request.
The lawsuit alleges that publishers representing more than 90% of U.S. copyrighted music joined forces through the National Music Publishers’ Association in conspiring against X.
X said the publishers have flooded the platform with weekly takedown notices targeting thousands of posts containing copyrighted music — including content from high-profile accounts — to pressure the platform into accepting industrywide licensing terms.
The complaint said X has removed thousands of posts and suspended more than 50,000 users, harming its user base and advertising revenue. It asked the court to restore competitive conditions in music licensing and compensate X for lost advertising revenue.
In 2024, X won dismissal of most of a lawsuit filed in 2023 by 17 music publishers, including Sony and Universal, that accused it of infringing copyrights on nearly 1,700 songs by letting people post music online without permission. The publishers sought more than $250 million in damages.
X said in Friday’s lawsuit that some of the publishers who sued have been willing to negotiate a settlement on individual terms.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington; Editing by David Bario, Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis)
