Irving Azoff's Global Music Rights Sues Entravision For 'Willful Copyright Infringement'

Irving Azoff

IRVING AZOFF's GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS has filed a lawsuit in CALIFORNIA federal court today accusing ENTRAVISION COMMUNICATIONS of "willful copyright infringement." The lawsuit alleges that, over two years, ENTRAVISION stations played more than 130 copyrighted songs nearly 15,000 times without paying songwriters a dime.

GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS claims it made five separate written proposals to ENTRAVISION but the company ignored every one and paid songwriters nothing.  Nevertheless, ENTRAVISION willfully performed the songs thousands of times dating back to 2017.

DANIEL PETROCELLI of O'MELVENY, the lead attorney representing GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS, said, “GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS’ mission is to ensure that songwriters receive fair pay.  ENTRAVISION used our writers’ songs to drive listeners and earn millions of dollars in revenue, yet it paid our writers nothing. ENTRAVISION is a large, sophisticated company and knew exactly what it was doing.  GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS will defend the rights of our writers against such intellectual property theft.”

A publicly traded media conglomerate, ENTRAVISION reports annual revenues of nearly $300 million. Its radio stations alone have reported annual revenue of more than $60 million in recent years.

The lawsuit filed today in U.S. DISTRICT COURT for the CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA is the first copyright infringement suit brought by GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS, a performance rights organization founded in 2013 by IRVING AZOFF.  GMR licenses the performances of songs written by a small roster of popular artists, such as FOREIGNER, THE EAGLES, PHARRELL WILLIAMS, PEARL JAM and SMOKEY ROBINSON. 

Commented AZOFF< “I founded GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS to stand up for writers who create the music we love and form the foundation of the radio industry. When a radio company willfully violates the law, we will defend our writers every way we know how.  Litigation is not our first choice, but ENTRAVISION’s flagrant conduct left us no other option.” 

GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS is also a party in antitrust litigation against the RADIO MUSIC LICENSING  COMMITTEE, which represents over 90% of the $22 billion terrestrial radio industry.  Since 2017, hundreds of RMLC members have entered interim licenses with GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS in order to perform publicly the songs in its repertory.  Other RMLC members declined interim licenses with GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS and stopped performing its works.  ENTRAVISION, however, declined the interim licenses, paid no royalties, yet performed GLOBAL MUSIC RIGHTS’ works almost 15,000 times. 

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