SYDNEY, Australia — Amelie Logan and Paris Mavrick are the 2026 recipients of the Justin Cosby Scholarship, a prestigious award established in memory of the late Australian music industry executive Justin Cosby.

The scholarship is jointly funded by the Australian Institute of Music (AIM) through the AIM Education Foundation and an endowment from Cosby’s friends, family, and business partners, and is dedicated to supporting one student annually pursuing a Bachelor of Music Business degree.

For the first time, organizers have chosen to extend their support to the next generation of music industry professionals by awarding two scholarships. The 2026 application pool, reads a statement was one of “exceptional strength.” Logan and Mavrick came out on top, by demonstrating “a strong passion for the music and creative industries, with ambitions to build meaningful careers that contribute to the future of the sector.”

Raised in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Logan has gained experience working on a slew of music festivals, including Pitch Music & Arts, Beyond the Valley, and Strawberry Fields.

“I’m truly honored to receive The Justin Cosby Scholarship,” comments Logan. “It’s an incredible opportunity to further develop my skills and deepen my understanding of the live music industry. I’m excited to continue learning, gaining hands-on experience, and contributing to a scene that has given me so much inspiration and passion.”

She will pursue the Bachelor of Music Business at the Australian Institute of Music, with goal to developing the skills and networks essential to forge ahead with a sustainable career in live music and events.

Mavrick, meanwhile, comes from a sporting background and has recently transitioned into music and brings with a drive and passion to explore opportunities in the entertainment sector.               

“The cliché ‘music is my life’ genuinely resonates with me it reflects who I am at my core,” comments Mavrick. “Knowing that Justin shared this same passion makes this scholarship even more meaningful and inspires me to contribute to the industry in my own way while honoring his legacy.”

They join previous scholarship recipients Oscar Badman (2025) and Bonnie Rose Stoyanof (2024).

With his infectious enthusiasm for music and warm personality, Cosby formed Inertia Music with Ashley Sellers back in 2000. Over time, Cosby worked with the likes of Sia, Bjork, Bon Iver, Ben Lee, Asgeir, M83, Grizzly Bear, Robyn and Big Scary, and was highly regarded by the Australian independent community, reads a tribute from AIM following his passing. The music-loved music professional died in June 2021, aged 50.

Inertia Music, Musica Copa, One Louder, Future Classic, JB Hi-Fi, Remote Control Records, MGM Distribution, So Frenchy So Chic, Proper Productions and Sweat It Out made generous financial contributions towards the scholarship.

LONDON, England — The U.K.’s main musician and songwriter trade associations have responded to calls for PRS to reduce its blanket license fees for grassroots music venues.

On Tuesday (April 14), the Music Venue Trust launched a campaign titled Set The Record Straight: Fair Licensing Fees, aimed at examining how PRS For Music’s licensing charges are calculated, applied and enforced across the U.K.’s grassroots live music circuit.

The MVT reported that a number of venues were struggling under the weight of PRS For Music’ licenses, claiming that current practices are producing inaccurate billing outcomes for independent venues across the country. 

U.K. venues are covered by a blanket license which allows for the performance of songs written by PRS members. Where performance data is unavailable, estimates are provided. Responding to the campaign, the collection society explained: “PRS licenses venues for the use of music and relies on the data they provide, including capacity and event information. Estimations are only used when the relevant data has not been provided.”

On Wednesday (April 15) the Council of Music Makers — which represents the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), The Ivors Academy, the Music Managers Forum (MMF), the Music Producers Guild (MPG) and the Musicians’ Union (MU) — responded to the campaign.

In its statement, the CMM said that it “rejects any proposals for a reduction in licensing fees or collections for the use of music,” and that “such moves would simply have a negative impact on the income of songwriters and composers and make their careers less viable.”

It added that, “CMM believes that collective licensing plays a crucial role as part of the licensing of live performances. Members of the CMM have long worked with collective management organisations like PRS to challenge and improve practices, and to ensure they work in favour of the music-makers, without whom there would be no music to perform in a live setting.”

The CMM also called on PRS to “ensure its licences are fair and transparent for both music-makers and users of music, not least grassroots venues,” and said the collection society must “employ new technology to overcome inaccuracies and inefficiencies with songwriter payments.” 

PRS alluded to the challenges and said that “we are continuously investing in and improving the collection of live data to accelerate accurate payment of royalties, including improving setlist collection tools and exploring AI tools to find fan generated setlists to supplement missing data.”

Read the Council of Music Makers full statement below.

The Council Of Music Makers has today (15 April) issued a statement calling on all parts of the UK’s live sector to recognise and uphold the value of songs and songwriters.

Underlining the irrefutable importance that the work of songwriters plays in underpinning the live sector, the CMM rejects any proposals for a reduction in licensing fees or collections for the use of music. Such moves would simply have a negative impact on the income of songwriters and composers and make their careers less viable.

CMM believes that collective licensing plays a crucial role as part of the licensing of live performances. Members of the CMM have long worked with collective management organisations like PRS to challenge and improve practices, and to ensure they work in favour of the music-makers, without whom there would be no music to perform in a live setting.

The majority of songs performed in UK venues and festivals are written by PRS members or members of other collecting societies around the world, making a blanket licence administered by PRS essential to both music-makers and their business partners in live music.

The blanket licence approach accommodates covers, co-writers, overseas writers and publishers, and PRS income is vital for many grassroots artists and songwriters, especially those artists playing support slots and festivals, helping music-makers as they seek to overcome the widely documented challenges around the economics of touring.

Meanwhile, the flexibility already exists for artists who are exclusively performing their own songs at their own gigs to opt-out of the blanket licence and handle the licensing of their performing rights themselves, if and when the artist believes that to be the best approach.

There remain a number of areas where further improvements with collective management are needed, to achieve better accuracy, distribution and transparency. CMM members will continue to work with PRS in the interests of our members to ensure that those changes are made in a manner that does not create unintended consequences which would undermine creators’ ability to make a living in an already tough industry,

PRS must ensure its licences are fair and transparent for both music-makers and users of music, not least grassroots venues. PRS should also employ new technology to overcome inaccuracies and inefficiencies with songwriter payments. And where there is unavoidable unallocated income, it should be used to support grassroots music-makers, for example through the PRS Foundation.

However, while making these changes, we must always ensure that we respect and protect the value of the songs and compositions on which the entire music industry is built, and without which it cannot exist.

A new lawsuit seeks financial damages from Ye (formerly Kanye West) over a well-publicized 2024 altercation at Los Angeles’ famed Chateau Marmont, which the rapper later blamed on an alleged sexual assault of his wife, Bianca Censori.  

Ye’s alleged victim, using the pseudonym John Doe, sued the rapper for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress in a Monday (April 13) civil complaint in L.A. The man claims he hit his head on a concrete restaurant floor after Ye punched him in the face without any provocation in April 2024 and then “repeatedly punched plaintiff as he lay unconscious on the ground.”

The allegations match contemporaneous reports of an altercation at the Chateau Marmont, which Ye and his reps later said arose because this man had grabbed and sexually assaulted Censori at the venue. However, Monday’s lawsuit claims this explanation is entirely false.

“The evidence, including video recordings from the scene, proves that plaintiff did not engage in any inappropriate or offensive conduct with a woman in defendant’s party, or anyone else,” write John Doe’s lawyers.

According to the lawsuit, Ye smeared the man’s reputation by falsely accusing him of sexual assault, including during a “widely viewed podcast appearance.” Ye spoke about the incident on an April 2024 episode of The Download, reiterating the claims that the man assaulted Censori and joking, “He had to go to bed early.”

Now, John Doe wants Ye to pay for his medical bills from the incident, as well as for the emotional distress and reputational damage he suffered because Ye exposed him to “public scorn, suspicion and ridicule,” according to the complaint.

The Chateau Marmont incident was reported to the Los Angeles Police Department at the time, an LAPD rep told Billboard. No criminal charges were brought.

Reps for Ye and Censori did not immediately return requests for comment on the matter on Tuesday (April 14), nor did a rep for the Chateau Marmont.

Ye’s reps released a statement on the alleged groping of Censori back in 2024, saying, “The assailant didn’t merely collide with her. He put his hands under her dress, directly on her body, he grabbed her waist, he spun her around and then he blew her kisses. She was battered and sexually assaulted.”

THE BIG STORY: After five weeks of trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom, the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation finally went to the jury, which must now wade through the massive case to decide if the concert giant broke the law.

At closing arguments, an attorney for dozens of states called Live Nation a “monopolistic bully” that had run roughshod over the live music industry and hurt fans. The company’s attorney said it was instead a “fierce competitor” that had played fair and succeeded simply by outperforming its rivals.

Which of those narratives will the jury believe? For now, the better question might be: How long will it take them to pick one?

Deliberations started Friday (April 10), and it’s anybody’s guess how long they’ll go. Antitrust cases are often tried as bench trials that are decided by a judge; handling such a case via jury trial is relatively rare. That’s because they are immensely complicated disputes involving economic theories and legal complexity that are difficult for regular people to understand. Does your neighbor know how to define a “relevant antitrust market”?

These jurors are tasked with weighing weeks of testimony and reams of documents to reach such determinations, including competing academic analyses of the economics of live music. They’re staring at a verdict sheet that is many pages long, featuring multi-part questions that read like logic games on the LSAT.

For context, when the government tried a similar case against Google over the dominance of its search engine, the two-month bench trial wrapped up in November 2023. The judge — a legal expert aided by a team of clerks — did not issue his ruling until August 2024.

The jury won’t deliberate for nine months, or anything close to it. But they are dealing with an almost impossibly detailed case and, if they really want to understand it, they could be there for a while. Or they could give up and just go with their guts.

You’re reading The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, subscribe here.

Other top stories this week…

— Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs and federal prosecutors battled at an appeals court as he sought to overturn his 50-month sentence, with judges grilling both sides over “exceptionally difficult” legal questions about how much time the star deserved.

— A real-life showgirl who sued Taylor Swift for trademark infringement over The Life of a Showgirl asked a judge for a nationwide injunction barring Swift from selling merch tied to her record-smashing album while the case plays out in court — an extraordinary request that’s unlikely be granted.

— Roc Nation’s insurance company filed a lawsuit to prove that it doesn’t need to pay for CEO Desiree Perez’s ongoing lawsuit with her daughter, arguing that it has nothing to do with her corporate role at the helm of Jay-Z‘s company.

— The two attorneys who won a landmark ruling for songwriter Cyril Vetter on copyright termination sat down for a Q&A with Billboard — talking about the case, their client and a potential battle at the Supreme Court: “I like our argument better than I like theirs.”

— The Prince estate reached a settlement with singer Apollonia, ending their dispute over who owns legal rights to the name made famous by the movie Purple Rain.

— Bruce Springsteen‘s merch provider filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking counterfeit sales during the Land of Hopes and Dreams American Tour — starting with the Boss’ hometown show in New Jersey.

— Pooh Shiesty was denied release on bail after his bombshell arrest for allegedly barricading Gucci Mane in a Dallas recording studio and forcing the 1017 Records boss to sign a label deal release at gunpoint.

— Los Angeles prosecutors charged a 55-year-old woman named Michelle Dick with multiple felonies for allegedly stalking Lindsey Buckingham before assaulting the Fleetwood Mac singer in a recent attack.

— Irving Azoff’s Music Artists Coalition (MAC) threw its support behind Salt-N-Pepa (Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton) in their legal battle to win back control of their masters from Universal Music Group.

— A Taylor Swift fan can’t bring a class action against StubHub after her $14,000 Eras Tour tickets were voided on the day of the concert, a judge said, because she signed an arbitration agreement.

— StubHub agreed to pay $10 million to resolve accusations from the Federal Trade Commission that the ticket platform intentionally ignored new “junk fee” rules for the first few days they were in effect.

— Lil Baby’s hemp company sued a joint venture partner for allegedly tarnishing the rapper’s reputation by shipping illegal, contaminated cannabis products across the country.

— Maryland passed legislation to restrict when prosecutors can cite rap lyrics as criminal evidence against the artists who wrote them, becoming the third state to rein in the controversial practice.

The blockbuster Live Nation antitrust trial is finally coming to an end, and a federal jury will soon decide whether the company has used its size to wield unlawful monopoly power in the live music industry.

The New York jury heard closing arguments on Thursday (April 9), more than a month after the trial first kicked off in the case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and dozens of state attorneys general. The DOJ settled with Live Nation just a few days into the trial, leaving 33 states and the District of Columbia to pursue the company’s divestiture of Ticketmaster on their own.

According to the Associated Press, the states’ lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler, told the jury in his final pitch on Thursday that Live Nation is a “monopolistic bully.” Kessler said the company controls 86% of major concert venues in addition to the artist promotion and ticketing business — a level of control he equated to “digging the moat around the monopoly castle.”

Live Nation attorney David Marriott countered in his own closing statement that while the company is indeed big, it is a “fierce competitor” that plays fair in the live entertainment industry. He said the states do not have any tangible evidence of monopolistic conduct, and that Kessler’s 86% figure is a misleading number calculated by excluding key venues, such as stadiums, from the pool of “major concert venues.”

“This is a gerrymandered market made up for purposes of this litigation,” Marriott told the jury, per the New York Times.

The lengthy trial featured testimony from venue bosses including former Barclays Center CEO John Abbamondi, who said Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino threatened to divert concerts if he switched to rival ticketer SeatGeek. Rapino denied making such threats when he later took the stand himself, saying the company has achieved its success through top-notch work, not anticompetitive conduct.

Other key witnesses included AEG Presents CEO Jay Marciano, Live Nation president of touring Omar Al-joulani and Drake’s manager, Adel Nur (aka Future the Prince). A slew of economics and other expert witnesses also testified.

The jury will begin deliberating in private on Friday morning (April 10). On a technical level, the verdict form asks whether Live Nation violated federal and state antitrust laws via two key practices: requiring artists to use its promotion services in order to play its amphitheaters, and threatening to withhold Live Nation-promoted concerts from venues that don’t sign exclusive primary ticketing contracts with Ticketmaster.

Financial damages could be on the table if the jury’s answer is “yes” to any of these questions. It would then be up to Judge Arun Subramanian to decide what kind of structural relief is required. The states want to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, but the judge could find that limits on the company’s business practices are sufficient.

Live Nation has already agreed to some such limits as part of its settlement with the DOJ, including opening up its back-end technology to rival ticketers, allowing rival promoters to book its amphitheaters and offering a non-exclusive primary ticketing option to venues. The deal also created a $280 million fund to be distributed to any states that chose to sign on, though just a handful of states took that route.

Pooh Shiesty will remain in jail after his bombshell arrest for allegedly barricading Gucci Mane in a Dallas recording studio and forcing the 1017 Records boss to sign a label deal release at gunpoint.

Shiesty (Lontrell Williams Jr.) was denied bail following a Wednesday (April 8) evidentiary hearing in Texas federal court, where he was charged last week with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping over the alleged “armed takeover” in January. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.  

“Based on the credible evidence presented at the hearing, the court finds probable cause to believe that defendant committed the law violations alleged in the criminal complaint,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Renée Harris Toliver in a detention order obtained by Billboard.

Wednesday’s hearing featured testimony from an FBI agent about police reports given the night of the incident, when Shiesty allegedly pulled an AK-style pistol during a business meeting and forced Mane to release him from 1017. Though Mane (born Radric Davis) has not been named in court, the charging documents identify this victim as “R.D.” and describe him as the head of 1017.

Shiesty’s attorney, Bradford Cohen, told reporters after the hearing that the entire case rests on “very questionable” witness statements, noting, “The FBI doesn’t take three months to arrest someone if they believe everything that was said on the night that it occurred.”

“They have no contract,” said Cohen. “They have no video of this alleged signing of a contract. They have no guns. They have no jewelry. They have none of that physical evidence.”

Shiesty was charged last week alongside eight alleged co-conspirators, including his father, Lontrell Williams Sr., and the rapper Big30 (Rodney Wright Jr.). Prosecutors say these individuals barricaded the recording studio and robbed Mane’s associates of Rolex watches, a 1017 chain and a Louis Vuitton bag.

The alleged incident came just a few months after Shiesty’s release from prison on federal gun charges. He was still on post-release house arrest in January — a factor cited by Judge Toliver in Wednesday’s detention order.

“In light of that fact and the fact that the conditions of pretrial release at this court’s disposal are the same or similar to those defendant has already violated, the court finds that there is no condition or combination of conditions the court can impose in this case which will reasonably assure defendant’s appearance as required or the safety of the community or another person if released,” wrote the judge.

While some headlines say Pershing Square’s offer to buy the Universal Music Group (UMG) values the company at $64 billion — which would make it by far the biggest music industry deal ever — if you get into the details of the offer, it looks like Pershing Square’s founder and CEO, Bill Ackman, is trying to buy the major on the cheap. At least that’s the assessment of some Wall Street music investors and music industry executives.

For one thing, despite all the headlines touting the more than $60 billion valuation of the convoluted offering, the cash option, if it were available for all shares — which it is not — wouldn’t even be bigger than UMG’s initial public offering.

Pershing Square’s valuation is based on its forward-looking view that UMG’s stock price will have a projected value of 30.40 euros ($35) per share on Dec. 31, 2026, which would give the deal a valuation of 55.55 billion euros ($64 billion). However, if you read Pershing Square’s letter to the UMG board, it says UMG shareholders may elect to receive all cash or a mix of stock and cash consideration. If shareholders choose to receive all cash, they will receive 22 euros a share, which would give the deal an overall value of 40.34 billion euros ($43 billion).

In short, $43 billion would put the deal below UMG’s valuation after its first day of trading, when it closed at 25.10 euros, giving it a 46 billion euros valuation — then about $54 billion. But even the $43 billion valuation is a pie-in-the-sky figure, because Pershing Square is only proposing to bring 9.4 billion euros ($10.85 billion) to the table to pay for its deal by injecting 2.5 billion euros ($2.89 billion) in cash, raising 5.4 billion euros ($6.23 billion) in debt and getting another 1.5 billion euros ($1.73 billion) toward the financing by selling UMG’s Spotify holdings.

The non-binding offer will pay shareholders 5.05 euros ($5.82) a share and the equivalent of a 0.77 share in new UMG stock, which would see the share count fall by 17%, from 1.833 billion to 1.541 billion shares.

If you add in the $2.5 billion that Ackman still has in UMG stock — he paid $4 billion in 2021 for about 10% of UMG and, in 2025, sold about $1.5 billion of that, leaving him with a 6.2% stake in the company — that means he’s trying to take control of UMG for a total of about $12 billion, not $64 billion. In addition, he’s only bringing $5.5 billion of Pershing Square’s own money to the table. If shareholders agree to the Pershing Square proposal, at the end of the deal, Pershing will own an 11.7% stake in UMG shares, according to a Billboard transcript of a Pershing Square conference call with Wall Street analysts.

What Ackman is really trying to do, say music industry financial executives, is take over UMG on the cheap — or at the very least, ignite UMG share price increases.

As one music industry financial investor puts it, “Ackman is saying, ‘Trust me, I’m the man. I’ll put a great board in; we will get listed in the U.S., and we will get rid of the guys in Europe, and off we go.’ That executive describes the Pershing Square offer as a “non-transaction transaction. Is he really buying the company or is he saying, ‘Put me in charge and the company will do better’?”

A music industry financial executive similarly says, “While the offer is impressive on its face, it’s financially structured with very little cash, new debt and a very large equity component in a new UMG structure. Shareholders are not getting a premium in cash; they are taking a bet on the valuation that Pershing Square says it can get in the future.”

Pershing Square is betting that all current shareholders will choose to take the equivalent of 77% of their shares and 5.05 euros, instead of cashing out and choosing to take 22 euros a share. However, if shareholders do choose to take the all-cash payout, the math doesn’t work. As the Barclays Bank European Media Equity research analyst team puts it, “There is in effect no cash alternative.”

If, as Pershing Square expects, existing shareholders choose to take the equivalent of 77% of a share for each share outstanding and 5.05 euros, the cash component works out to 9.3 billion euros, which the money on the table would just about cover. Alternatively, the 9.4 billion euros cash offer on the table will only allow shareholders to buy, at 22 euros a share, 444.3 million shares — or just 23.3% of outstanding shares.

It’s unlikely that all shareholders will choose to take all cash, and it’s equally unlikely that all of them will choose to instead take the 0.77 a share trade-in deal plus 5.05 euros a share — meaning it will probably be a combination of both. But as Barclays’ European Media team puts it, either way, “The number of shareholders that can get €22.00 per share or 100% cash would be very small.”

Others wonder if the offer is even real. “Isn’t he just trying to stimulate share price? He is doing what activist investors do,” says a senior music industry executive.

If that was Pershing Square’s main intention, Ackman is off to a good start, as UMG’s stock closed at 19.06 euros on Tuesday (April 7) — up nearly 11.5% from the April 2 close of 17.10 euros. According to the music industry financial executive, Ackman’s offer served as a huge advertisement that UMG’s stock is undervalued, and “he just got at least 10% richer.”

Ackman has previously said he believes UMG shares are undervalued and do not reflect the company’s performance, a point he extensively reiterated on Tuesday’s conference call. He is not alone in that assessment, as others have noted that UMG has been producing strong results but has not been rewarded when it comes to its share price — something that UMG management agrees with. Just last week, in an apparent bid to boost the share price, UMG announced it would buy back about 500 million euros ($574 million) worth of its shares. In a statement at the time, UMG CFO Matt Ellis said, “We currently see a meaningful dislocation in UMG’s market valuation.”

But that effort isn’t enough for Pershing Square. During the conference call, Pershing executives laid out that while UMG’s performance has been strong, UMG management hasn’t paid enough attention to the share price. In particular, Ackman cited the company’s ownership of about $2.7 billion in Spotify shares and said the market is giving UMG no credit for that stake.

“There’s been no presentation by the company of what the plans are for that holding. In general, we hear from shareholders that they just find the business hard to understand, difficulty getting their questions answered,” Ackman said during the conference call, according to the Billboard transcript. “They’re surprised almost every quarter with puts and takes in the earnings. And really this relates to how investor relations have been handled by the company.”

Later in the call, according to the Billboard transcript, Pershing Square Capital Management chief investment officer Ryan Israel said, “We think that we can add a lot of value [by helping] capital allocation and shareholder communications. And we think the combination of those two things can be very powerful to allow for very significant earnings per share growth over time.”

During the call, Pershing Square outlined where it believes it can deliver value to shareholders. But some worry that despite having a five-year history of UMG ownership, Pershing Square’s understanding of the music business still falls short.

The music industry financial executive says there are always “serious concerns about how a financially structured transaction” will impact investment in artists and songwriters. “Many CFOs of the larger financial institutions have shown they are not concerned about investments” in A&R when it comes to getting cost savings to raise a stock price valuation, the executive adds.

But Pershing Square’s Israel addressed that concern during the conference call, saying, “We agree with management that the first priority of the free cash flow of the business is investments and acquisitions that further improve the competitive position of the company.”

Industry insiders are nevertheless skeptical that that will remain the case. As another senior music industry executive puts it, “Did you listen to the conference call? It was like the greatest hits of someone who knows just enough to be dangerous.”

Salt-N-Pepa is getting support from Irving Azoff’s Music Artists Coalition (MAC) in litigation with Universal Music Group (UMG) over rights to the iconic hip-hop duo’s catalog of hits.

MAC submitted an amicus brief on Tuesday (April 7) to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit brought by Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton against the world’s largest music company. The dispute stems from UMG’s refusal to revert the rappers’ master recordings after they exercised the so-called “termination right,” a tenet of copyright law that allows creators to claw back their intellectual property decades after signing it away.

A New York federal judge ruled in January that Salt-N-Pepa has no termination rights because the duo was not actually a party to any of its 1986 contracts with Next Plateau Records, which has since been absorbed by UMG. These deals were executed by the duo’s music producer, Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor, and do not say anywhere that Salt-N-Pepa owned its songs.

MAC, the advocacy group founded by Azoff in 2019 alongside artists like Don Henley, Dave Matthews and Anderson .Paak, warns in its amicus brief that the lower court’s decision creates a dangerous roadmap showing record labels and music publishers how to hold onto copyrights past the termination window.

“This ill-conceived rule makes it trivially easy for publishers or distributors to evade termination: By transferring rights to a new entity and ensuring an author is neither a party to nor an executor of the new grant, publishers and distributors can entirely insulate themselves from an author’s enforcement of statutory termination rights,” reads the brief. “Accepting such a rule would render decades of negotiation and eventual compromise between authors and distributors — as codified in the 1976 Act — entirely meaningless, nullifying the hard‑won protections the 1976 Copyright Act affords authors.”

MAC, joined by writer advocacy group Authors Alliance and legal organization Public Knowledge, says Congress explicitly created copyright termination to address creators’ inadequate leverage and compensation early in their careers. The brief notes, for example, that Bob Dylan received only a $100 advance in his first publishing deal in 1962, and Bruce Springsteen signed away his entire catalog to a manager in exchange for just 3% of royalties in 1972.  

Also on Tuesday, the National Society of Entertainment & Arts Lawyers (NSEAL) submitted its own amicus brief in support of Salt-N-Pepa. Authored by the New Orleans-based music attorney who recently won a landmark appellate ruling on the global reach of copyright termination, the brief focuses on the “work for hire” exception to termination rights.

Under copyright law, work created in the scope of employment is not eligible for termination. Though the lower court did not focus on this exception in the Salt-N-Pepa ruling, NSEAL argues that the decision implicitly determined — incorrectly — that the rappers were working for hire in 1986.

“Inherent in the district court’s conclusion that there was no ‘transfer of copyright ownership’ by Denton and James, is a determination that the subject recordings were ‘works made for hire,’” writes NSEAL. “Respectfully, making that determination without any factual development or legal explanation was reversible error, and the case should be remanded.”

Salt-N-Pepa’s lawyer, Richard Busch, praised both briefs in a statement to Billboard: “That these amazing groups of the top people in the industry filed these amicus briefs speaks volumes not only to the strength of this appeal but to its importance to all artists in the music industry.”

A rep for UMG did not return a request for comment on the amicus briefs on Wednesday (April 8). The company’s own appellate brief is due next month.

Following Pershing Square’s bid to acquire Universal Music Group (UMG) on Tuesday (April 7), the music giant has confirmed that its board of directors received the “unsolicited and non-binding proposal” in a brief press release in which it expressed “complete confidence in” the company’s strategy under chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge.

“The Board of Directors, together with its advisors, will review the proposal in accordance with its fiduciary duties and analyze its implications for shareholders, employees, artists, songwriters and other stakeholders,” the release reads.

It adds, “The Board of Directors has complete confidence in UMG’s strategy and the leadership of Sir Lucian Grainge and the Company’s management team. UMG will have no further comment on the proposal until the Board of Directors completes its review.”

The offer from the Bill Ackman-founded investment firm values UMG at more than $60 billion. The proposed deal, which would entail a 9.4 billion euros ($10.85 billion) total cash or 5.05 euros per share ($5.82) offer to shareholders, would result in UMG merging with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings and would move the new entity’s headquarters from the Netherlands to Nevada, while its stock would move from the Euronext Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange.

“While business performance has been strong, UMG’s share price has languished,” Ackman wrote in a Tuesday letter to UMG’s board of directors that mentioned uncertainty over UMG investor Bolloré Group’s 18% stake in the company, its decision to delay a U.S. stock offering and the under-utilization of the music company’s balance sheet as reasons for the stock’s overall downward trajectory since its closing price on the first day of trading. “Notably, none of the above issues relate to the company’s execution of its music business, and importantly, all of the above issues can be addressed in a merger transaction.”

Ackman, who held a call to address analysts’ and shareholders’ questions about the proposed deal earlier on Tuesday, wrote that he expects the deal to close by the end of the year.