Artist News Business News Labels & Publishers Legal

Victory Records comments on long running dispute with A Day To Remember as the metalcore outfit preps new album

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 16 August 2016

Victory Records has put out a statement in response to a recent interview in Kerrang with American metalcore band A Day To Remember, claiming that frontman Jeremy McKinnon made a number of “untrue statements” regarding his band’s long-running legal dispute with the label.

As previously reported, ADTR first went legal against their then label Victory in 2011. Allegations over under-paid royalties were seemingly at the heart of the dispute, though quite how many albums the band had delivered to the record company was also a sticking point. The band argued that they sued to secure what they were due, while Victory claimed that the outfit was just trying to get out of their contractual commitments to the label, possibly so that they could jump ship and sign to a major.

Despite ongoing legal wranglings between the band and the label, the former got permission from the courts to self-release 2013 album ‘Common Courtesy’ without the latter’s involvement. Another self-released album, ‘Bad Vibrations’, is now incoming, hence the new interview with Kerrang.

Responding to the magazine’s chit chat with McKinnon, Victory formally put its side of the dispute on the record in a statement last week, stating that: “The core issue in the lawsuit is how many ‘albums’ A Day To Remember delivered under its agreement with Victory Records. Not once before filing the lawsuit did ADTR claim to Victory or to the public that they had satisfied their five album recording commitment”.

As for other claims against the label, Victory says: “[The band] never asserted that Victory’s efforts concerning the marketing, promotion and distribution of [their earlier] albums was anything less than stellar. [And] during the years ADTR considered itself a Victory artist, they never complained about royalties”.

Justifying its conduct since the legal battle began, the label continued: “Victory continued to pay A Day To Remember royalties even after the band filed [its 2011] lawsuit. Victory ceased paying royalties when ADTR interfered with Victory’s merchandise sales to Hot Topic which was well into the lawsuit”.

“Victory asserted a ‘set-off’ counterclaim in the lawsuit”, the statement went on, “which in this situation permits the withholding of payments that may be otherwise due based on ADTR’s material breaches of their agreement, which includes selling merchandise and music via ADTR.com, to other retailers, and refusing to deliver two commitment albums to Victory. As a result of these breaches, Victory sustained damages in the millions of dollars”.

And finally: “In August 2011 – two months after ADTR filed the lawsuit – Victory made its first of many settlement offers to resolve this dispute. They were all rejected by the band. ADTR rejected Victory’s settlement proposals again in 2013 and instead self-released ‘Common Courtesy’. This was a very obvious indicator that they never had any intention of settling their lawsuit”.

So that’s all fun, isn’t it? Back in 2013, when seeking approval to release ‘Common Courtesy’, a spokesperson for the band said: “In May of 2011 we joined the long list of bands that have filed suit against Victory Records. Although our case is still ongoing, we are very pleased with the judge’s decision to allow us to release our next record. The only thing that has mattered to us while dealing with this lawsuit was getting new music to our fans. We are finally going to do that and we couldn’t be more excited!”