p2pnet - rss feed: Apple # 1 sues EMI
p2p news / p2pnet: The first Apple company says it’s suing EMI for the recovery of more than £30m (almost $53,175,000) in unpaid royalties.
” The deficit is said to have been uncovered during an audit of the Beatles’ company Apple Corps,” says the Daily Telegraph, going on:
” Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and relatives of John Lennon and George Harrison have launched legal proceedings in the High Court in London and the Supreme Court in New York.
“Neil Aspinall, the head of Apple Corps, said: ‘We have tried to reach a settlement through good-faith negotiations and regret that our efforts have been in vain. Apple and the Beatles are, once again, left with no choice but to sue EMI’.”
The holier-than-thou Big Four Organized Music cartel, of which EMI is a member, is no stranger to lawsuits of this nature.
New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer ordered Universal Music Group (France), Sony-BMG Music Entertainment (Japan and Germany), the EMI Group (UK) and the Warner Music Group (USA) to return $50 million to musicians they’d had under contract.
You may remember EMI and the Beatles in connection with the Grey Tuesday demo. As the controller of all Beatles sound recordings for Capitol Records, EMI was firing off Cease & Desist letters when DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, a mix compiled from Jay-Z’s Black Album and The Beatles’ White Album, showed up online.
Daily Telegraph - Study finds many U.S. homes hoarding downloaded music, December 15, 2005
no stranger - Big Music vs Eliot Spitzer, September 8, 2005
Grey Tuesday - Grey Album goes Gold, February 25, 2005
December 16th, 2005 at 11:42 pm
I don’t mind seeing EMI get it’s hand held over the fire, but it’s not like Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and relatives of John Lennon and George Harrison need the money. I’m sure EMI has ripped off MANY other artists who actually need the money, but those artists can’t even dream of affording the legal costs it would take to recover what was stolen from them…
December 17th, 2005 at 1:42 am
I wish the survivors of The Beatles the best in recouping the lost income that the labels tend to believe they can keep stealing from the artist. Once again we see the names of the major labels in the news. Why is it none of it is ever good?
The labels are past masters at juggling the books. It was once mentioned also that artists can’t just get an accounting of the books. An audit isn’t for free and most of the time, it is beyond the reach of most artists to pay for an audio. You don’t throw $50,000 at funding an audit everyday with the hopes you will uncover enough to recoup the cost of discovery.
Claims in the past have also lead to duplicate runs in the pressing plants that weren’t recorded so as to be credited to the artists accounts. Whether these are true, I have no clue but the charges were serious enough that the courts thought they had enough merit to have a case. How will hidden these profits that might have been diverted from artists accounts only leaves one in speculation of how many other artists simply can’t afford to have the books looked at and if there is one group you can be sure there are far more. The old case of where there’s smoke there’s fire.
December 17th, 2005 at 7:34 am
…or:
A) EMI are trying to steal the royalties from The Beatles (Bad)
B) EMI are so stupid they can’t add up what the royalties are supposed to be. (Incompetent)
C) EMI forgot that they exist to serve
i) The Beatles
ii) The Public
(Unsurprising)
At least The Beatles have enough cash to take the record company to court. I wish we could say the same about a certain 17000-odd other people.
December 17th, 2005 at 9:09 am
i thought michael jackson bought the entire beatles’ works some years ago. or did he sell them to pay for court costs?
December 19th, 2005 at 12:15 am
I believe he owns 50% of their back catalog.