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Youngbloodz(s) clarification

By | Published on Monday 2 April 2007

SonyBMG

Ah, clarifications all round, ladies and gentlemen, regarding those reports on Friday that US rap duo The Youngbloodz are suing SonyBMG over unpaid digital royalties. Actually, American folk group The Youngbloods are suing SonyBMG over unpaid digital royalties. Can I just stress that wasn’t our mistake? Various US websites were reporting it was the hip hoppers and not the one time folkers who were doing the suing. Had I ever heard of The Youngbloods I might have done some double checking before we ran the story.

The Youngbloods action is part of the ongoing and previously reported litigation by various US artists that argues that the way the majors calculate the digital royalties they pay their talent – which is inline with the way they calculate royalties on physical CD sales – is all kinds of wrong. They argue digital sales are more akin to the way labels licence music to radio than to the way they sell CDs – and artists get a much bigger royalty on radio revenues.

Much of that action has been targeted at the Sony labels within SonyBMG, but in February the Allman Brothers Band (one of the most proactive artists in the ‘digital royalties should be higher’ campaign) and The Youngbloods together quietly kicked off action against the BMG labels also. The Allman Brothers band, though, have dismissed their case against BMG, for reasons I’m not sure on, so last week’s litigation was The Youngbloods resubmitting their lawsuit as a stand alone case. So now you know.

And let’s all make sure we don’t confuse our ‘s’s and ‘z’s in the future, shall we?



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