Music publishers and social media platform X could be nearing a settlement on their two-year-old copyright infringement lawsuit, according to new documents recently filed in federal court in Tennessee.
All three of the Big Three music publishers — Universal Music Publishing, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell — along with other major players including Concord, BMG and Kobalt, filed a $250 million lawsuit against X (then still called Twitter before Elon Musk changed the name later that year) in June of 2023, stating that the platform “has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service” and that X “consistently and knowingly hosts and streams infringing copies of music compositions.”
“Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,” National Music Publishers Association president and CEO David Israelite said in a statement when the suit was filed in 2023. “Twitter knows full well that music is leaked, launched, and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform. No longer can it hide behind the DMCA and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.”
The lawsuit was partially dismissed last year, with Judge Aleta Trauger throwing out some of the publishers’ infringement claims, but the case was still allowed to proceed with the plaintiffs’ allegations that X was “providing more lenient copyright enforcement to verified users, failing to act on takedown notices in a timely manner, and failing to take reasonable steps in response to severe serial infringers.”
On June 6, the publishers and X filed a joint motion to stay the proceedings, writing that both “have determined to engage in good-faith efforts to fully and amicably resolve this lawsuit.” By June 11, Trauger had put in the order for the stay. The publishers and X have 90 days to resolve the case before the stay is lifted.
“If discussions remain productive, but a resolution has not been reached within 90 days, the
Parties may jointly request a further extension,” Trauger wrote.
“The intent of the stay is to discuss with X the resolution of the suit and proper compensation to songwriters and publishers for past unlicensed uses, while providing an opportunity for go forward licensing,” a spokesperson for the NMPA said in a statement.
A representative for X didn’t immediately reply to request for comment.
According to the parties’ initial stay request, discovery in the case was expected to end July 17, 2025.
The companies wrote that there were still “numerous depositions” set to take place before discovery ended, along with opening expert reports due in August.
The parties said, “The foregoing activity, along with other expected and unexpected activity, including discovery disputes, would interfere with prospects of an amicable resolution to this litigation.”
