Publishing Catch Up: Dua Lipa Wins Copyright Lawsuit, Spotify Paid Over $4.5 Billion to Music Publishers & More
- Meg Adams
- Mar 28, 2025
- 8 min read
Back at the end of Q1 2025 with this quarters publishing catch up, where we collate the latest music publishing news, including; acquisitions, signing, funding, facts and figures, new hires, legal and more.
Deals & Acquisitions
Clint Lagerberg Inks With Peermusic Nashville (Music Row)
Peermusic has signed Clint Lagerberg to a worldwide publishing deal. The signing encompasses co-publishing of future works and select back catalog.
Kobalt Signs Global Publishing Deal with Anyma (Digital Music News)
Leading independent music publisher Kobalt announces a new partnership with Anyma, acclaimed electronic music artist and live performer whose immersive experiences are captivating worldwide audiences.
Sony Music Publishing raps up deal with MTech (Hits Daily Double)
Sony Music Publishing has teamed with producer Sounwave to sign Matthew Bernard, better known as MTech, who contributed to six tracks on Kendrick Lamar’s pgLang/Interscope album GNX.
Nashville-based, alternative, pop and country singer-songwriter Zachary Knowles has signed a global publishing deal with Concord Music Publishing.
The latest musician selling their catalogue is electronic-music star Deadmau5. The buyer in his case is Create Music Group, with a deal valued at more than $55m that also includes the catalogue of his Mau5trap label.
It’s being billed as one of the largest music catalog deals involving a modern ‘frontline’ act: New Orleans duo Suicideboys (aka $uicideboy$) are reportedly shopping both their masters and music publishing rights for a princely sum.
Sony Music Publishing Re-Inks Admin Deal with India’s TIPS Music (Digital Music News)
Sony Music Publishing has renewed its exclusive global deal with India’s TIPS Music. The deal is expanded to include YouTube worldwide, excluding India, as a key platform for international publishing exploitation.
Notorious B.I.G. Estate Partners With Primary Wave in Deal Including Publishing, Recordings, More (Variety)
Variety can confirm that the estate of the Notorious B.I.G. and Primary Wave Music have struck a partnership encompassing the late rapper’s music publishing and recordings, as well as his name, image, and likeness. The estate and Primary Wave will collaborate on all business moving forward.
Arden Records, which describes itself as an “artist-first lo-fi music label,” has expanded its business with the launch of a new publishing division.
HarbourView Equity Partners has agreed to acquire the publishing catalog and select masters of artist, producer and songwriter T-Pain.
Sony Music Publishing renews multi-year creative partnership with Hello Group Publishing (Music Week)
The deal will see Sony Music Publishing elevating global support to THG Publishing – the music publishing division of The Hello Group – across A&R, sync, licensing and administration and will advance collaboration across Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific markets.
Downtown Music Publishing Extends Partnership with Tori Amos (Digital Music News)
Downtown Music Publishing announces a slew of expansions and renewals, including a renewed partnership with singer-songwriter Tori Amos.
Reservoir Media has acquired the publishing catalogue of Lastrada Entertainment. The catalogue’s longevity has been boosted by sampling, including on California Love by 2Pac, We Belong Together by Mariah Carey and Will Smith’s Miami, as well as many more.
Deezer and SACEM have adopted an artist-centric payment system (ACPS) for publishing rights on Deezer in France. It is billed as the world’s first update to the remuneration model for publishing since streaming was introduced over a decade and a half ago.
Signings
Kobalt has signed a global publishing deal with UK band South Arcade. The Oxford-based group have amassed more than 20 million streams across their debut EP (released in December) and almost 800,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone.
Rian Ball Signs With HAYLO Music (Music Row)
Songwriter and producer Rian Ball has inked a co-publishing deal with HAYLO Music, administered by Endurance Music Group.
Glass Beams Signs With Concord Music Publishing ANZ (The Music Network)
Glass Beams strikes a global publishing deal with Concord Music Publishing ANZ. Led by the enigmatic, masked Melbourne musician Rajan Silva, Glass Beams’ recording career is two EPs deep, the first of which, Mirage, dropped in 2021.
Twin Atlantic band members sign publishing deal with 23rd Precinct and Notting Hill Music (Music Week)
Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty and Ross McNae have signed a publishing deal with Glasgow-based music publisher 23rd Precinct.
Kelly Archer signs with Sony Pub, Red Creative (Hits Daily Double)
SMP Nashville and RED Creative Group have signed in-demand songwriter Kelly Archer to a global publishing agreement.
Troy Miller signs to Stellar Songs/Tim & Danny Music (Music Week)
Troy Miller has signed a new publishing deal with Stellar Songs/Tim & Danny Music, we can exclusively reveal.
Rising Norwegian artist and songwriter Live Rabo Lund-Roland, known professionally as Rabo, has become the first songwriter based outside North America to sign with Disney Music Publishing.
River House Artists, in partnership with Sony Music Publishing Nashville, has signed rising country singer-songwriter Hudson Westbrook to a global publishing agreement.
Funding, Facts & Figures
IMPF has received a second substantial grant from the European Union as part of the Creative Europe Programme, which will further fund new projects designed to support IMPF’s members across Europe.
Legal
A federal judge in New York has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Warner Records-signed act, ruling that Levitating, released in 2020, did not illegally copy a 1979 disco song.
Universal Music Group and its fellow music rightsholders were dealt a setback in their proceedings against multi-billion-dollar AI platform Anthropic.
Mariah Carey has won a lawsuit that claimed the perennial hit All I Want For Christmas Is You infringed the copyright on another song with the same name. The court also slapped sanctions on the lawyers who brought the case against Carey, saying they had filed “frivolous” and “unsupported” claims in the case in “to cause unnecessary delay and needlessly increase the costs of litigation.”
A federal judge pushed back today on Cyrus' claim she can’t be sued for copyright infringement by a firm that bought a share of Bruno Mars' “When I Was Your Man”
A long-running copyright lawsuit over Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud could end up being decided by the US Supreme Court. Lawyers for Structured Asset Sales (SAS), which owns part of the rights to Marvin Gaye’s 1973 song Let’s Get It On, have asked the US’s top court to take on the case, as reported by Bloomberg Law and other outlets.
LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne claimed that the deal have Musixmatch “not only the exclusive rights to sub-license Warner-Chappell lyrics, but also to provide the lyric data itself to third parties”.
The company has published a form letter for songwriters and publishers to send to the register of copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, to put across its views. Those include its suspicion that the inquiry is “focused solely on the perspective of music licensees… music users, and not music creators”.
MLC's bundling lawsuit against Spotify dismissed (Music Week)
The Mechanical Licensing Collective has lost its legal case against Spotify over lower royalty rates for bundling.
The German collection society has accused the company of processing recordings of songs from GEMA's repertoire without remuneration. It follows legal action against Suno by the RIAA last year.
People
All assets and staff previously under Avex USA will now be consolidated under the Avex Music Group banner, headquartered in Los Angeles, while S10’s existing team and operations will remain unchanged.
Independent music publishing company peermusic has promoted Elizabeth Rodda to President of US Latin, Latin America and Global Society Relations, expanding her role within the company.
Black River Publishing Promotes Sarah Hudspeth (Music Row)
Black River Publishing has promoted Sarah Hudspeth to Creative Manager. “Sarah’s remarkable ability to spot emerging talent and her unwavering passion for the creative community has always set her apart,” says Rebekah Gordon, Vice President of Publishing.
Concord Music Publishing announced two notable executive level promotions in the Nashville office: Kourtney Kirkpatrick has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Synchronization and Matt Turner has been promoted to Vice President of A&R.
Sony Music Publishing has promoted Henry Naldjian to the role of chief technology officer, effective immediately. Naldjian will continue to be based at the company’s Nashville office, reporting to Sony Music Publishing’s chief information officer Bill Starke.
Concord promotes Lidia Kim to new digital division for business & legal affairs in publishing (Music Week)
Concord has promoted Lidia Kim to senior vice president of the newly formed digital division of business & legal affairs for Concord Music Publishing. Kim will continue to be based in New York. She will report to Concord general counsel Amanda Molter.
Interesting Reads
Spotify announced earlier this year that it paid out a record $10 billion-plus to the music industry in 2024, bringing its total to nearly $60 billion since its inception in 2006. The company — the world’s largest paid music-subscription service by a wide margin — maintains that it pays out 70% of every dollar it generates to the music industry, a generous percentage for any business.
Crispin Hunt calls for more cooperation between collection societies amid concerns over Big Tech (Music Week)
As the former Longpigs frontman gets started supporting fellow songwriters, he outlines priorities including AI regulation – arguably the biggest issue of the moment – unearthing UK talent and fixing the data problem in an extended online version of his Music Week interview…
This International Women’s Day, we reached out to female-identifying founders and leaders in the music industry to take a moment to honour those who are breaking barriers, pushing boundaries, and shaping the future of the music industry.
Music licensing is evolving rapidly, and Soundstripe is at the forefront of this transformation. After releasing their Year in Review and 2024 Trends in Sync we wanted to speak to Travis Terrell, co-founder of Soundstripe, about his journey, emerging trends, and what’s next for sync music.
This year has been full of game-changing developments, from the ongoing growth of AI to significant industry deals and financial shifts. To spare you the deep dive, we’ve compiled the key insights, expert analyses, and market forecasts into this essential summary.
Ivors Academy backs Raye and Chappell Roan in calling for sustainable future for music creators (Music Week)
The call for industry action follows Chappell Roan’s recent speech at the Grammys, where she voiced her support for this cause, challenging the recording industry to provide creatives with a liveable wage and healthcare.
Jody Gerson is one of the most accomplished music publishers of the last five decades, so it’s no surprise that she was honored with the Recording Academy’s Industry Icon Award at Clive Davis’ Pre-Grammy Event on Saturday night. What is sadly surprising is the fact that as CEO of Universal Music Publishing, she is one of the very few female heads of a major music companies — a number that has been shrinking, rather than rising, in recent years.
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