If you lived through the late '90s, you probably remember the poppy post-grunge band Lit, purveyors of "My Own Worst Enemy" and its gargantuan octave riff. That riff is right up there with "Machinehead" and "1979" when it comes to songs that were on MTV in my adolescence. Apparently it's now an NHL anthem? That status has assuredly contributed to its continued popularity on streaming platforms — the song has tallied more than 500 million plays on Spotify alone — which leads us to today's news.
Lit have sued Sony, the parent company of their record label RCA, over unpaid streaming royalties, Billboard reports. The lawsuit — filed Monday by Lit frontman A. Jay Popoff, guitarist Jeremy Popoff, bassist Kevin Baldes and the estate of late drummer Allen Shellenberger — alleges that a clause in their 1998 contract promises them 50% of streaming royalties from their music, therefore Sony owes them $800,000 in back payments.
Sony currently pays Lit the industry standard 14% royalty rate for track streams on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streamers. But a parenthetical in their Sony contract allocates the band 50% of the net proceeds from master use licenses of their music — for instance, "RCA’s license to another person of the right to embody a master recording on a website in a so-called ‘streaming’ format, which is not subject to the ‘digital download’ of that master recording by a viewer." With this kind of foresight, it seems Lit were actually their own best friends all along.
Billboard points out that when Lit signed their contract, streaming was not on the music industry radar. MP3s were still a fledgling technology. Napster was still a year away from launching. The first mainstream streaming platforms, PressPlay and Rhapsody, did not emerge until the 2000s. It's unclear why streaming was even mentioned in the contract, but it says what it says, and Lit say they've been trying to extract their 50% royalty rate from Sony since 2023. The company allegedly offered "a half-hearted defense" of its current royalty rate and then stopped responding to Lit's inquiries.
"[Sony's] failure and/or refusal to account properly to plaintiffs for streaming royalties received from licenses from third-party DSPs under the 1998 agreement has damaged plaintiffs in excess of $800,000 in underpaid royalties as reflected on royalty statements rendered from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2026," Lit’s attorney Chris Vlahos writes.
Lit are suing for breach of contract and seeking to recover the disputed $800,000. They're also arguing that the reduced royalty rate has "artificially depressed" contributions to their SAG-AFTRA pensions and threatened their eligibility for union health insurance.
