Willie Colón Collaborator Sues Over Unpaid Royalties for 'Tras La Tormenta' Songs

A Venezuelan composer is suing the company that controlled the catalog of late salsa icon Willie Colón, claiming he is owed more than $300,000 in unpaid songwriting royalties for two tracks he wrote decades ago. Singer-songwriter Amílcar Boscán filed the lawsuit Monday, targeting the Willie Colón Music Company, which the complaint says was owned and controlled by Colón until his death earlier this year.

The case centers on two songs, "Caer en Gracia" and "Talento de Televisión," both written by Boscán for "Tras La Tormenta," Colón's 1995 collaborative album with Rubén Blades that climbed to No. 3 on Billboard's Top Tropical Albums chart.

According to the lawsuit, Boscán signed over the copyrights to both songs to Willie Colón Music Company back in 1994, under an agreement that promised him half of all publishing royalties generated by the tracks.

Boscán alleges that promise was never honored, stating that the company failed to pay him the vast majority of what he was owed and never provided the royalty statements required under the songwriter agreement.

The financial stakes are significant given the songs' reach: the complaint notes that "Talento de Televisión" alone has racked up more than 450 million streams on Spotify.

Beyond the unpaid royalties, Boscán's lawsuit raises a more pointed accusation involving songwriting credit. He claims Willie Colón Music Company omitted his name from BMI registration paperwork entirely, effectively presenting Colón as the sole composer of "Talento de Televisión" despite Boscán having written it. That allegation forms part of a broader set of legal claims in the suit, which accuses the company of breach of contract as well as violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Boscán is also asking the court to formally recognize that his rights to both songs will soon revert back to him under a provision of copyright law known as the termination right, which allows songwriters to reclaim ownership of their work decades after initially signing it away.

The composer says he already sent formal notice of termination to Willie Colón Music Company two years ago, setting an effective date in 2031. However, according to the lawsuit, the publisher has disputed both the validity of that notice and whether termination of the songwriter agreement would ever be legally permitted in the first place, setting up a central conflict the court will need to resolve.

Colón, the Bronx-born trombonist and bandleader widely regarded as one of the architects of modern salsa, died in February at age 75. Over the course of his career, he recorded numerous songs written by Boscán, who first made a name for himself as lead singer of the Venezuelan band Guaco before going on to build a solo career of his own.

With the termination right dispute still unresolved and the estate yet to respond publicly, the case appears likely to hinge on both the specifics of the original 1994 agreement and the broader legal question of when, or whether, Boscán can reclaim control over songs that have generated hundreds of millions of streams over the past three decades.