The 10 Biggest Music Law Stories of 2023: #MeToo, AI, Ed Sheeran, Young Thug, Taylor Swift & More

Ed Sheeran Wins Blockbuster Trial

All eyes in the music industry were on a Manhattan federal courtroom in April, when Ed Sheeran headed to trial over allegations that his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed the copyright to Marvin Gaye’s famed “Let’s Get It On.” After a weeklong trial in which the star himself sparred with opposing lawyers and strummed a guitar from the witness stand, the jurors cleared him of any wrongdoing — a verdict that brought a sigh of relief from the music business. A decision for Sheeran’s accusers would have reverberated much like the infamous 2015 verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their megahit “Blurred Lines,” which left the industry hyper-cautious about any songs that sounded remotely similar. Instead, the verdict was the latest incremental step in a slow march toward a post-“Blurred Lines” world, where courts are more often ruling that basic “musical building blocks” must be kept free for future songwriters to use. 

The Music Industry’s #MeToo Moment

Six years after the #MeToo movement sparked a national backlash against sexual assault and sexual harassment, the music industry experienced a new wave of such accusations in 2023, thanks largely to the passage of laws in New York and California that temporarily lifted statutes of limitations. The accused individuals included executives like Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine, former Recording Academy presidents Neil Portnow and Mike Greene, label exec Antonio “L.A.” Reid and late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun; aging rock stars like Axl Rose and Steven Tyler; contemporary artists like Jimmie Allen and Jason Derulo; and Hollywood star/recording artist Jamie Foxx. But the most shocking allegations were filed against hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was sued in November by R&B singer and longtime romantic partner Cassie over allegations of assault and rape. Though that case quickly settled, Combs was then hit with three more cases from three different women, each alleging separate instances of sexual assault during the 1990s. Diddy has denied the allegations — in a statement he said “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” — but that’s now for the courts to decide. 

Young Thug Heads To Trial In Atlanta

More than 18 months after Young Thug (real name Jeffery Williams) was indicted on accusations that he ran a violent Atlanta street gang, he finally headed to trial as 2023 came to a close. Prosecutors say Thug’s YSL was not really a music collective called “Young Stoner Life,” but a gang called “Young Slime Life” that committed murders, carjackings and drug trafficking over the past decade. Thug’s attorneys, meanwhile, say he’s done nothing wrong and is being targeted over a largely fictional persona. Pitting one of hip-hop’s biggest stars against prosecutors in America’s unofficial rap capital, the YSL trial is one of music’s most closely-watched criminal cases in years. But it’s also a high-profile battleground in the long fight over the use of rap lyrics as evidence — a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from civil liberties activists, defense attorneys and, increasingly, the music industry. Ahead of the trial, a judge ruled that Thug’s lyrics were fair game, saying repeatedly that the “First Amendment is not on trial.” Will they have an impact on the outcome of the case? And will their use spur further action to restrict the practice? Stay tuned in 2024 for answers. 

Reggaeton In the Copyright Crosshairs

There was no bigger music copyright case in 2023 — and we quite literally mean “bigger” — than the massive lawsuit targeting just about every reggaetón star in the world. Filed by the influential musical Jamaican duo Steely & Clevie, the case claims legal ownership over the song that spawned the dembow rhythm — the genre-defining, boom-ch-boom-chick percussion featured in countless reggaeton songs. If that sounds like a sweeping claim, that’s because it is: Steely & Clevie’s lawyers are suing over 150 defendants, including Bad Bunny, Pitbull, Karol G, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber as well as units of all three major music companies, claiming that over 1,800 separate reggaetón songs infringe their rights. “This case is jaw-dropping,” Duke University School of Law professor Jennifer Jenkins told Billboard. “If they win, this would confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.” A ruling on whether the case can move forward should come early in 2024. 

Hall v. Oates – Say It Isn’t So!

After decades of hit-making and touring, the beloved pop rock duo Hall & Oates descended into a bitter legal civil war in 2023. The casus belli? A plan by John Oates to sell his half of one of the duo’s joint ventures to Primary Wave — an agreement that Daryl Hall says left him “blindsided” and was the “ultimate partnership betrayal.” Hall believes such a deal (which covers the band’s recording royalties and name rights but not their valuable compositions) violates the terms of their agreement, and he says there’s “no amount of money” that would convince him to partner with Primary Wave. But based on court filings from both sides, it sounds like the Primary Wave deal was just the final tipping point in a broader “divorce” between the two singers. After a brief fight in Nashville court, the dispute is now headed for a private arbitrator, who will decide whether the deal can go through. 

Twitter (Sorry, “X”) Faces The Music

Things didn’t go smoothly in 2023 over at Elon Musk’s Twitter (rebranded to “X” in July) where a flood of fake verified accounts and a proliferation of offensive content was followed by an exodus of major advertisers. Things got worse in June, when a huge coalition of music publishers filed a lawsuit alleging that Twitter had become a hotbed of unlicensed music and that the site had taken little action to stop it. Spearheaded by the National Music Publishers’ Association, the lawsuit claims that over 1,700 different songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé had been infringed — a claim that, if proven, could put Musk’s company on the hook for as much as $255 million in damages. The case was the latest in a long effort by publishers to use litigation to force companies like Roblox and Peloton to sign blanket licensing deals for music used on tech platforms, an ever more important source of royalty revenue. Whether that strategy will now work on Musk — who recently told advertisers like Disney to “go f— yourself” — is anybody’s guess. 

Lizzo Lawsuit: Body Posi or Toxic Boss?

The music world was shocked when Lizzo was hit with a lawsuit in August from three former dancers who claimed, among other things, that the star singer had fat-shamed her employees. Those claims were not the core of the lawsuit, which alleged that the dancers experienced sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, including being pressured to touch nude dancers during a live sex show. But the accusation regarding body size — the dancers say Lizzo committed disability discrimination when she “called attention” to a dancer’s weight gain — was a particularly loaded allegation against an artist who has made body positivity a central aspect of her personal brand. Lizzo’s lawyers aren’t exactly taking the claims lying down: In October, they filed a strongly-worded motion to dismiss the case, calling the allegations a “fabricated sob story” launched by “opportunists” seeking “a quick payday.” They argue the lawsuit should be tossed out under California’s so-called anti-SLAPP law because it threatens Lizzo’s free speech — an unusual argument that could be decided by a judge any day.  

Termination Rights Loom Large

The question of copyright termination — the legal right of any musician to take back control of their works decades after they sold them off to a label or publisher — remained one of the industry’s most closely-watched legal issues in 2023. In January, artists like Don Henley, Sheryl Crow and Sting threw their support behind a new federal rule aimed at making sure that songwriters who use termination to regain control of their music actually receive streaming royalties after they do so. Weeks later, a federal judge gutted a class action claiming UMG had “systematically” rejected termination notices from hundreds of artists. The judge said that the case could potentially raise “issues of fairness in copyright law,” but that it could not proceed as a class action and that each individual artist would need to sue their label separately. 

Artificial Intelligence’s Many Legal Issues

The biggest news story of 2023 — music, law or otherwise — was the sudden explosion of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, a game-changing technology that offers immense new possibilities and poses terrifying new risks. AI first really caught the music industry’s attention in April, when an artist named Ghostwriter went viral with a track featuring uncanny AI-generated fake vocals from Drake and The Weeknd, sparking debate over how artists can prevent the use of their voices. But the much bigger question — and it’s a potentially billion-dollar question — is whether AI companies can “train” their machines by feeding them millions of existing songs written by humans. In October, UMG and other music companies took that issue to court, arguing that the AI firm Anthropic was breaking the law by using “vast troves” of copyrighted songs without permission. Anthropic said such training is a clear-cut legal fair use, but UMG and the other music companies argued that it was nothing more than mass theft: “Copyrighted material is not free for the taking simply because it can be found on the internet.” 

Taylor Keeps Re-Recording — And The Labels Respond

Even when it comes to legal issues, Taylor Swift was a dominant force in 2023. The superstar was mentioned during arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court; her Eras Tour was at the center of antitrust litigation, federal investigations and Congressional hearings; and she even made headlines when she hired a veteran litigator as her new general counsel. But Swift’s biggest legal story this year was actually her continued release of “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings, first with Speak Now in July and then 1989 in October. That’s because, as reported in October by Billboard’s Steve Knopper, the success of Swift’s re-recordings has prompted labels to try to prevent it from ever happening again. For years, standard record deals at Universal, Sony and Warner required artists to wait between five to seven years from the release of the original, or two years after the contract expired — whichever came later — to re-record music made under the agreement. But in the wake of Swift’s re-recording campaign, some music attorneys told Billboard that they were receiving contracts that expand that period to 10 or even 15 years or more. Call it the Taylor effect: “Now, because of all this Taylor Swift stuff, we have an even new negotiation,” one industry insider said at the time. “It’s awful.”

Honorable Mentions