X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against over a dozen music publishers as well as their trade association the National Music Publishers Association, accusing them of colluding with the goal of coercing the platform into purchasing industrywide licenses.
The lawsuit, filed in Texas federal court on Friday, details an alleged years-long campaign to “leverage monopoly power” and force X into acquiring licenses from all music publishers at inflated rates. The company has been “denied the ability to acquire a U.S. musical-composition license from any individual music publisher on competitive terms,” states the complaint, which names the NMPA as well as 18 individual publishers including the “big three” Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Publishing and Warner ChappellMusic. Without those deals, X isn’t allowed to host certain songs that users post.
Källa: Music Publishers Sued By X in Growing Licensing Battle
