Universal Music Group (UMG) have settled a lawsuit with King Crimson over a sample used in Kanye West’s ‘Power’.
‘Power’ – which featured on the critically acclaimed fifth studio album ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted’ – samples King Crimson’s song ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ from their 1969 debut album ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’. UMG owns and operates the record label Def Jam Recording, a division which – in a joint venture with Roc-A-Fella – distributed the song.
Allegedly, West sampled the track without license. Now, the song has over 926million plays on Spotify and garnered over 140million views since it was first uploaded to YouTube in 2010.
UMG was hit with legal action in 2022 when the prog band filed a complaint, alleging the music conglomerate owed them royalties from West’s 2010 hit. The claimant in this case was Declan Colgan Music Limited (DCM), the owner of the mechanical licence for ’21st Century Schizoid Man’.
DCM claimed the royalties they received for streaming were not comparable to those they had received for CD sales. The rights holder is claiming that Universal “failed, and continues to fail, to comply with its royalty accounting obligations.”
According to Variety, Universal and Declan Colgan Music have an agreement that pays King Crimson a royalty rate of 5.33 per cent for copies of ‘Power’ that are sold or “otherwise exploited.” The US rapper was not involved in the dispute, while his song was the target of the legal action.
Variety has now reported that – in the week the case was due to go to trial in the High Court – the parties have reached a settlement agreement on Monday, according to a court order.
The High Court signed off on a consent order which concluded that there shall be no order on the claim or as to costs. The details of the settlement were not disclosed, but Variety wrote that Declan Colgan Music received payment as part of the agreement.
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