Elon Musk's X Corp is suing 18 major music publishers and a major music industry trade association in the United States on Friday, alleging that they conspired to block competition and force the social media platform to purchase licenses for musical works at inflated prices.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in the U.S. state of Texas, asserts the National Music Publishers' Association, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Chappell, and other record labels of violating federal antitrust law by refusing to negotiate individual licensing agreements with the social network.
The lawsuit alleges that the record labels, which represent more than 90% of copyrighted music in the U.S., joined forces through the National Music Publishers' Association to conspire against X. "X has been denied the ability to acquire a music composition license in the U.S. from any individual music publisher on competitive terms," the lawsuit says.David Israelite, president and CEO of the National Music Publishers' Association, said in a statement that X is the only major social media company that does not license music on its platform.
"We allege that X has been engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a bad-faith effort to divert attention from the legitimate right of publishers and songwriters to defend themselves against X's illegal use of their music," Israelite said.
Sony Music referred to the association's statement and declined to comment further. Universal Music and Warner Chappell did not respond. Representatives for X did not respond when contacted by Reuters.
X said the publishers flooded the platform with weekly takedown notices, targeting thousands of posts containing copyrighted music—including content from popular accounts—to pressure the platform into accepting industry-wide licensing terms.
The complaint says X removed thousands of posts and suspended more than 50,000 users, damaging its user base and advertising revenue. The company is asking the court to restore competitive conditions in music licensing and compensate X for lost advertising revenue.