On Wednesday, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) speaking on behalf of 17 music publishers accused Twitter, owned by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), of copyright encroachment for using music without paying for it. The lawsuit claims more than $250 million in damages for violating almost 1,700 copyrights.
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Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google which owns YouTube, Meta Platforms’ (NASDAQ:META) Facebook and Instagram, Snap, and TikTok, Sony Music (NYSE:SONY), and Universal Music Group (OTHEROTC:UMGNF) are among the music publishers who have sued Twitter.
Besides being impacted by its weakening advertising revenue, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino now faces this lawsuit challenges.
What is the Twitter Lawsuit About?
Twitter is one of the major social networking websites and it does not pay for music rights to its owners. NMPA sees that with its broader business model, Twitter is now used extensively for short text-based messages and exchanging multimedia content. Users regularly post videos of popular music for which artists need to be paid as their work is used in that way.
The court filing states that Twitter, “knowingly facilitated, and profited from” use of the copyrighted music. The music publishers state that Twitter encourages user infringement as it leads to engagement expansion and rising advertising revenues for the company.
In contrast, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, and TikTok have agreements to pay the music industry.
More About Music Publishing Companies
Let’s take a quick look at some of the music publishing companies and some whose parent companies are publicly listed. Using the TipRanks Stock Comparison Tool, we have summarized the below:
