Music publisher Wixen has sued Meta, accusing the social media giant of employing “unscrupulous” and “illegal” tactics in a bid to force it into signing a new licensing deal that offered much lower royalty rates than previous deals. Those tactics involved Meta lying to Wixen’s songwriter clients and their managers.
Wixen claims that, as negotiations over a new licensing deal continued throughout 2025, Meta removed Wixen-published songs from the Instagram and Facebook Reels music library, even though its previous Wixen licence was still in force. Meta then - says Wixen - told affected artists that the publisher had demanded that their music be removed.
According to Wixen’s lawsuit, “Meta made these false statements with the malicious intent to strong-arm Wixen into accepting drastically reduced rates for its clients by harming and disrupting Wixen’s business and contractual relations with its clients”.
When those tactics didn’t work and Meta’s previous Wixen licence expired last month without a new deal being agreed, Meta continued to include the publisher’s songs in its music libraries. Meaning it was busy removing Wixen songs when it had a licence and then kept them streaming when it didn’t.
As a result the publisher is suing Meta for infringing its copyrights, but also for making “false and defamatory statements” and for “interfering with Wixen’s contractual relations”.
Social media platforms that allow users to insert music into the videos they upload need licences covering the copyrights in both recordings and songs. With Anglo-American repertoire, it is often publishers like Wixen that negotiate licensing deals for the song rights.
In its lawsuit, Wixen says it has had licensing deals with Meta since 2018. The most recent deal expired last month and, with that in mind, negotiations began about renewing Meta’s Wixen licence last March.
But, Wixen says, “despite the massive increase in the use and importance of Reels, Meta sought to drastically cut the licence rates to a small fraction of what Wixen and, therefore, Wixen’s clients, had received over the past seven years”. The publisher refused.
After Wixen made it clear it wouldn't accept the royalty rate cut, it says that Meta “engaged in unscrupulous and ultimately illegal tactics to try, unsuccessfully, to strong-arm Wixen into accepting a drastically lower licence fee”.
The lawsuit discusses various incidents where Meta allegedly removed Wixen-controlled songs from its music library, even though at that point the previous licence still applied. Having done that, Wixen claims, Meta then “lied to Wixen clients and their managers about the reasons for the removal of their music from Facebook and Instagram”.
All of this was done, the lawsuit says, in the hopes that “Wixen clients would complain and even leave, and that potential clients would avoid hiring Wixen”. And that the risk of all that happening would “pressure Wixen into accepting renewed licence rates that are a small fraction of what Wixen and its clients have received over the past seven years”.
But Wixen resisted that pressure, allowed its licence to expire, and is now going the litigation route.