Johnson & Johnson is the latest company to be sued for using unlicensed music in videos it posted to social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. Though this time it’s production music that has been allegedly used without permission, rather than hit records from superstar artists.
Filing the lawsuit is Associated Production Music - or APM - a production music business co-owned by Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing.
“Production music is the name given to recorded music that is intended to be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media”, its lawsuit explains, before bragging, “with more than one million tracks, APM’s production music catalogue is the largest, deepest and broadest music collection in the production music industry”.
Earlier this year, the lawsuit goes on, “APM became aware that defendant, Johnson & Johnson”,
and the social media channels of various brands owned by or affiliated with the company, “have engaged, and are currently engaging in, rampant infringement of the recordings by exploiting them in connection with numerous promotional postings".
Although most social media platforms have their own licences from the music industry, those only cover user-generated content, not brand content. Which means if brands owned by Johnson & Johnson post promotional videos to social media, the music needs to be licensed just as if they were making an advert for TV.
“At no point did defendant ever obtain APM’s license, authorisation or consent to synchronise the recordings with the videos”, the lawsuit adds. “Moreover, despite being repeatedly contacted by APM regarding defendant’s unlicensed uses of the recordings, defendant has refused to obtain proper licences or admit wrongdoing”.
The majors have previously sued brands like Bang, Gymshark, Iconic London and OFRA Cosmetics for using commercially released music in their social media posts without licence, while the Beastie Boys recently filed a lawsuit against the Chili’s restaurant chain over their unlicensed use of their track ‘Sabotage’ in a social media video.
Production music is generally cheaper and easier to license for audio-visual productions, including advertising and promotional videos, though licences are still required.
It will be interesting to see whether the Johnson & Johnson brands targeted here for some reason thought they could use APM music without licence, perhaps incorrectly assuming their videos would be covered by the platforms’ licences. Or maybe they licensed the APM tracks for other usage and then mistakenly believed they were also covered for social media content.
Assuming APM is right that its copyrights have been infringed, those incorrect assumptions and mistaken beliefs could be costly. APM is seeking actual damages and “the disgorgement of any and all gains, profits and advantages obtained by defendant” as a result of the infringement, or alternatively statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.