Music Publishers and Elon Musk's X Settle Copyright and Antitrust Lawsuits

Elon Musk's X and a coalition of major music publishers have agreed to walk away from dueling copyright and antitrust lawsuits that had been working through federal court for more than a year, ending one of the more contentious legal fights between the social media industry and the music business.

The publishing arms of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment joined forces in 2024 to sue X, which had stood alone among major social platforms in refusing to sign a blanket licensing agreement covering music shared by its users.

Court filings submitted on July 16 show that both sides now intend to voluntarily drop their respective cases against one another. Neither the filings nor statements from either party disclosed the terms of any settlement.

The original lawsuit, spearheaded by the National Music Publishers' Association, targeted what the group viewed as X's long-standing refusal to pay for the music circulating on its platform. Rivals including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat had all struck licensing arrangements that gave users access to an approved catalog of songs for their videos and posts.

X never followed suit, and NMPA president David Israelite had publicly identified the company as his organization's most urgent legal priority well before the suit was filed. He argued at the time that X was sheltering behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal statute that shields websites from liability over user-uploaded content as long as they remove specific infringing material once notified. Israelite and the publishers contended that this notice-and-takedown system was inadequate, since flagged songs could simply be reposted by other users moments later.

The publishers' complaint alleged that more than 1,700 songs, including work from artists such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, had been infringed on the platform without a license in place, exposing X to potential damages as high as $255 million.

A federal judge declined to dismiss the case in 2024, clearing the way for it to proceed toward trial. Litigation was later put on hold while the two sides pursued settlement negotiations, though those talks broke down, and the case resumed that November after both parties acknowledged they could not reach an agreement at that time.

X shifted from defense to offense in January, filing its own suit accusing the NMPA and its member publishers of colluding to exert unlawful collective monopoly power over the platform.

The countersuit claimed the publishers had turned copyright takedown notices into a weapon, flooding X with hundreds of thousands of such requests after the company declined to accept their licensing terms. That antitrust case was still in its early stages when the settlement was reached this week, meaning it never advanced far enough for a judge to rule on its merits.

The publishers involved in the litigation represented a broad swath of the music publishing industry, including Concord, Universal Music Publishing Group, peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and Wixen Music Publishing.

Details of any financial arrangement or licensing commitment tied to the settlement have not been made public.