Universal Music Group Sued Over Kanye West's King Crimson Sample on "Power"
Declan Colgan Music Ltd alleges that they have not been paid the proper amount of royalties.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has been hit with a lawsuit over the King Crimson “21st Century Schizoid Man” sample Kanye West used on “Power.”
Declan Colgan Music Ltd (DCM) — the owners of the mechanical rights of “21st Century Schizoid Man” — is alleging that UMG has not been paying them the proper amount of streaming royalties from “Power.” Reports state that DCM, Ye and his production company Rock the World previously signed a deal that allowed the artist to sample the track in return for a 5.33% royalty on each copy of “Power” sold or “otherwise exploited,” and that DCM should receive the royalties “on the same terms” as West did. His contract with UMG at the time stated that “the royalty figure for a streaming track was equivalent to that of a track on a physical CD,” however DCM is now claiming that the music corporation “has failed, and continues to fail, to comply with its royalty accounting obligations in respect of one mode of exploitation, namely the making available of the Power [r]ecording to consumers through so-called ‘streaming’ services.”
DCM alleges that UMG is only paying them a percentage of the the money they get as a whole with the inclusion of the streaming platforms, and they are now looking to receive “all sums due” along with interest, plus a declaration from the court “setting out the correct basis upon which to account for streaming royalties.”
Elsewhere in music, Pusha T recently opened up about the Kanye West-Kid Cudi feud after the pair appeared on the same track of It’s Almost Dry.
