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Legal
Beyonce sued for singing her own songs
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 22 February 2010
OK, that headline is all kinds of misleading. But it always amuses me when, because of the whims of the music industry, artists get in trouble for singing their own songs at gigs because they don’t have the appropriate song licence from the collecting society which represents the writers of the songs they sing, even if the songwriter is the artist themselves. Of course 99.9 times out of 100 it’s the promoter of the gig who is liable not the artist, as is the case here.
Russian collecting society RAO, which represents Beyonce’s songwriting collecting society ASCAP in Russia, is suing the company it says promoted Ms Knowles gig in Moscow last November because, they say, said promoter failed to get a public performance licence off them. The society said in a statement last week: “Permission could have been obtained from RAO, an accredited collecting agency, by signing a license agreement. Since such an agreement with RAO was not signed, public performance of songs at the singer’s concert was illegitimate”.
According to Billboard, under Russian copyright rules RAO could demand anything between 10,000 and 5 million roubles – that’s anything between £215 and £108,000 – though it’s not clear what the society is pushing for. They might first have to convince the Moscow courts that the company they are suing, Anons, was indeed the promoter of the Beyonce show. They claim they were only ticket agents.
