Sony Music sues Triller for non-payment

The lawsuit was filed in New York this week with Sony claiming Triller has not made payments in a timely manner. Sony said the issues started when it ended its deal with Triller after missed payments in March, after which Triller stopped making payments completely. The music label said the outstanding debt amounts to millions of dollars, but its requests for payment have been ignored.

Breach of agreement

Sony and Triller entered a content distribution agreement in September 2016, which allowed the video-sharing platform to reproduce, distribute and create derivative works of the music company’s sound recordings, artwork and metadata. In return for using the content, Triller agreed to pay Sony a licensing fee among other considerations, with an initial payment due at execution of the deal, followed by payments on the first day of each month from March this year to November. 

“While Triller had historically failed to make payments in a timely manner under the agreement, its failures recently escalated,” the lawsuit reads. “Starting in March 2022, Triller failed to make any monthly payments required under the agreement, totaling millions of dollars … After months of Sony Music requesting that Triller pay its outstanding and overdue fees, and near-total radio silence in response.

Sony Music notified Triller that the non-payment was in material breach of the agreement on 22 July 2022. The label also provided a sample list of 50 sound recordings that remain “available in the Triller Audio Library”, which the platform publicly performed weeks after their licensing deal was terminated on 8 August. 

“After Triller failed to substantively respond, much less cure its breach of the agreement by making payment, Sony Music terminated the agreement on 8 August 2022. In doing so, Sony Music expressly informed Triller that its continued use of Sony Music Content would constitute willful copyright infringement.”

Triller’s licensing woes

Sony’s recent lawsuit adds to a number of other cases. In US producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz are suing Triller demanding $28m in missing payments after the platform acquired their song battle platform Verzuz in 2021.

Last year, Triller renewed its licensing agreement with Universal Music Group. This was after Universal had accused Triller of “shamefully” withholding payments owed to our artists and refusing to negotiate a new licensing deal. In response, Triller said it did not need a deal with UMG to continue operating as Universal’s relevant artists were “shareholders or partners on Triller, and thus can authorise their usage directly.”

Triller’s substantial fundraising

Earlier this week, Triller announced that it had raised a substantial amount of capital in the form of debt and equity in a recent financing round ahead of its expected IPO. Triller’s CEO and chairperson Mahi de Silva confirmed the fundraising with an amount to the tune of more than $300m.

“This was an important step for Triller to be properly funded entering the public Markets” de Silva said. “We want to thank our partners, investors and supporters whom to date have helped supercharge Triller from a startup in 2019 to a household name today, having raised over $300 million dollars, supporting over 750 million monthly interactions and over 300 million users across all of its platforms. We have only just begun.”

The company said it expects to list on the Nasdaq in New York during the final quarter of this year. The move to go public was unveiled in June with Triller announcing that it had filed an S-1 form with the SEC. Before that, Triller had initially planned an IPO through a merger with Seachange, but later backtracked on that move.