Legal and Management
Chicago Venue and Label Owner Removed as President Following Hidden Camera Allegations
On Saturday (Nov. 12), NBC5 Chicago reported that two women filed a civil suit against Michael Johnston, president and CEO of Audiotree, Audiotree Presents, Lincoln Hall, Schubas and Tied House, along with his wife Kelly Halverson. The suit was filed by two recent graduates of DePaul University, one of whom was hired in Dec. 2019 as a house manager, child caretaker and personal assistant while the other has worked as a nanny for the couple’s friends. The women allege the couple set up hidden cameras in their Chicago home to capture nude footage. Tonight (Nov. 15), Johnston has been removed as president and CEO of Audiotree, Audiotree Presents, Lincoln Hall, Schubas and Tied House. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a ...
Britney Spears Celebrates ‘Best Day Ever’ as Her Conservatorship Ends
Spears and her fiancé, Sam Asghari, showed their support for the very vocal movement that has put a spotlight on her controversial conservatorship by wearing #FreeBritney T-shirts on Thursday, ahead of Friday’s hearing. Asghari posted a video of himself and Spears wearing the shirts, soundtracked by Britney’s 2013 hit “Work Bitch.” (Even their dog wore a #FreeBritney tee on his Instagram Story.) Asghari also celebrated Friday’s ruling by immediately posting a graphic emblazoned with the word “FREEDOM” on Instagram. Asghari wrote in the caption: “History was made today. Britney is Free!” He ended the message with a single red heart emoji. At a press conference outside the courthouse on Friday, Britney’s attorney Mathew Rosengar...
Jay-Z Wins Trial Over Soured Cologne Deal
“You failed to prove your case, they failed to prove their case,” Justice Andrew Borrok said to an attorney for Parlux after the verdict was read aloud in court. “You’re excused.” Wednesday’s verdict came after nearly six years of litigation over “Gold Jay-Z,” which the superstar launched in 2013 through a partnership with Parlux, which had previously launched licensed fragrances with other major artists like Rihanna. Parlux accused Jay-Z and his S. Carter Enterprises of failing to promote the fragrance, breaching the terms of their business contract and costing the company millions. The lawsuit said he refused to appear for events like Good Morning America and then refused to approve later iterations needed to keep the brand relevant. Jay-Z denied ...
Latest Astroworld Lawsuit Filed by Family of 9-Year-Old Boy ‘Trampled’ at Festival
“This young child and his family will face life-altering trauma from this day forward, a reality that nobody expects when they buy concert tickets,” said Benjamin Crump, the family’s attorney, in a statement. “Concerts and music festivals such as this are meant to be a safe place for people of all ages to enjoy music in a controlled environment. None of that was true about the Astroworld Festival.” In addition to Scott, the lawsuit also named promotors Live Nation and ScoreMore as defendants, as well as many others involved in planning and operating Astroworld. Friday’s deadly crush occurred during the first night of a two-day festival attended by more than 50,000 people at Houston’s NRG Park stadium complex. Witnesses report thousands of fans pressing toward the stage, causing a panicked ...
Session Musicians Win Greenlight for $8M Royalty Fee Settlement With AFM, SAG-AFTRA
The lawsuit, filed by musician Kevin Risto in June 2018, accused AFM and SAG-AFTRA of essentially taking an illegal cut from the recording royalties that are paid to so-called non-featured artists — better known as session musicians. The two unions administer the Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund, which holds performance royalties from non-interactive digital streaming services like Pandora for the use of copyrighted sound recordings. The fund then distributes that money to session musicians, both union and non-union alike. Risto, a non-union musician, accused AFM and SAG-AFTRA of exploiting their control over the fund to improperly tack on a new 3% service fee, paid directly to the unions, before distributing that money. The lawsuit said the new fee was not in the best ...
Travis Scott & Live Nation Sued Over ‘Predictable’ Astroworld Tragedy
The lawsuit claims the disaster was the direct result of “a motivation for profit at the expense of concertgoers’ health and safety” and the “encouragement of violence.” “Defendants failed to properly plan and conduct the concert in a safe manner,” wrote Souza’s attorney, Steve Kherkher of the firm Kherkher Garcia LLP. “Instead, they consciously ignored the extreme risks of harm to concertgoers, and, in some cases actively encouraged and fomented dangerous behaviors.” Representatives for Scott, Scoremore and Live Nation did not immediately return requests for comment on Sunday (Nov. 7). The case is one of the first of many lawsuits that are expected to be filed over the incident, which appears to be one of the deadliest crowd disasters at a music event in years. The crush occur...
Gladys Knight’s Son Gets Prison Time Over Restaurant Taxes
Shanga Hankerson opened his first restaurant, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles, in Atlanta in 1997. The son of R&B legend Gladys Knight has been sentenced to serve two years in prison for failing to withhold payroll taxes for the restaurants that bore his mother’s name, federal prosecutors in Atlanta said. Shanga Hankerson opened his first restaurant, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles, in Atlanta in 1997. Over the next several years, he opened at least three more locations in Georgia and Washington, D.C. Hankerson, 45, “willfully disregarded his tax obligations for many years,” Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine said in a news release. During his sentencing Wednesday, Hankerson, who pleaded guilty in July, was also ordered to serve a year of supervised release following his prison ...
Bill Ackman Firm Calls Lawsuit Focused on UMG Investment Effort ‘Fatally Flawed’
The failed deal put a spotlight on PSTH’s structure as a blank check company, formally termed a SPAC, or “special purpose acquisition company.” SPACs typically function like reverse initial public offerings: They raise money as a public shell company ahead of time, and then use those funds to acquire a private company and thus take it public. But PSTH took a slightly different route, using the money it had raised from investors in an effort to buy shares of UMG. Filed in August by an investor, the case claimed that PSTH was not actually a SPAC at all. Claiming the company had only purchased securities, the lawsuit said the company was more akin to a traditional investment firm, like a hedge fund. As a result, the lawsuit said PSTH ought to be regulated under a differ...
Judge Rules LiveXLive Investor Fraud Lawsuit Can Move Forward
Iser conceded in a July court filing that some of the representations made by Ellin were false, writing “had LXL obtained the rights to stream any major music festivals, such festivals not only would have been listed on LXL’s website so its subscribers could pay LXL to view the festivals, but there would have been press releases and/or disclosures of such streaming rights in LXL’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.” In court Thursday, Iser argued that Schnaeir was an accredited investor who had worked as a licensed securities broker for over 20 years and should have done a more thorough job conducting due diligence. If Ellin’s statements about the IPO or representations about his plans to merge LiveXLive with SFX and Quello had been true...
Jamie Spears Asks For ‘Unconditional’ End to Britney Conservatorship
“Jamie unconditionally loves and supports his daughter. Full stop,” Weingarten wrote. “As he has done for her entire life, Jamie will do everything he can to protect and care for her. For the last 13 years, that included serving as her conservator. Now, it means ending her conservatorship.” The filing is not quite as dramatic as it seems. Jamie has already been suspended as Britney’s conservator, and has already asked to end the conservatorship. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 12, where it is expected that L.A. County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny will do so. But it had previously been unclear the extent to which Jamie would leave unconditionally, including whether he seek stipulations or compensation, or whether he would seek to avoid turning over records to Britney’s attorney Mathew ...
Bad Wolves Settle Lawsuits With Former Singer Tommy Vext
The next month, Better Noise filed its own lawsuit against Vext, accusing him of copyright infringement, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The suit claimed Vext was trying to block his former bandmates from using the Bad Wolves name, while promoting his own tour under the “confusingly similar name ‘B@D W8LV3S’ in a blatant attempt to confuse concertgoers.” He also allegedly breached the exclusivity agreement in his recording contract with Better Noise by posting new music on social media and on his OnlyFans account, including existing recordings owned by the label. Now, ahead of Bad Wolves’ new album, Dear Monsters, out Friday, the band is trying to put this chapter past it and has settled with Vext. The band can now continue to release music and tour ...
‘It’s Made People More Paranoid’: How Artists and Writers Are Covering Their Bases in the Post-’Blurred Lines’ Era of Interpolations
Some of these include HookTheory, a database which breaks down melodies, or the Music Copyright Infringement Resource (MCIR), which compiles music copyright cases from the mid 20th century onwards, both from the U.S. and some foreign territories. Though musicologists employ various online databases, today these options are still rudimentary and are only used to supplement the musicologist’s expertise. Creating a truly accurate tool would necessitate more advanced artificial intelligence than is currently available. In music, there are two separate copyrightable elements: the sound recording and the underlying composition itself. For sound recording copyright disputes, it is much more straightforward: if an artist copied and pasted a portion of a sound recording (“sampling”) into a ne...
