Judge cuts back lawsuit against Warner Music over international royalty deductions
completemusicupdate.comA US judge last week cut back a lawsuit filed by members of the rock band Orleans against Warner Music over the way the major has been processing and paying streaming royalties.
Some of the claims made by the band in the lawsuit were dismissed, although some remain.At the core of the litigation filed by Orleans members John Hall and Lance Hoppen is a common gripe in the artist community: record companies allowing their foreign subsidiaries to make deductions on digital income and then calculating the artist royalty based on what is received by the label in the artist’s home country after those deductions.
Which obviously reduces the total payout to the artist.Hall and Hoppen also claimed in their lawsuit that bad communication on the part of the major meant they had previously assumed their artist royalty on streams was being calculated based on ‘at-source income’, ie what the major was paid by the streaming service, not what was received by the home label after the foreign subsidiaries had taken their cut.
Which meant they hadn’t been prompted to take action on this before.After the two musicians went legal on all this last June, Warner tried to have the case dismissed.
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