Triller has agreed to pay more than $4.5 million in damages to Sony Music Entertainment to resolve claims that Triller breached an agreement covering its use of musicians’ songs on the platform.
The TikTok-like Triller has agreed to pay Sony Music Entertainment more than $4.5 million to resolve claims that Triller breached an agreement covering its use of musicians’ songs on its platform, according to a Wednesday filing in Manhattan federal court.
Sony Music said that Triller admitted to liability and would pay the amount it owed under their contract plus interest. Sony Music asked the court for a final judgment on the claim “immediately,” citing concerns about Triller’s ability to pay — given the company’s many ongoing settlements. Furthermore, the label says part of its lawsuit alleging that Triller infringed its copyrights would continue.
“Triller is more than a year late on some of those contract payments, and Sony Music should not have to wait longer to enforce a judgment to collect,” reads the filing.
Sony Music Entertainment sued Triller in August 2022, claiming the company had not made any payments since March of that year under a 2016 content-distribution agreement. The lawsuit included examples of songs by Sony Music artists such as Britney Spears, Harry Styles, and Janis Joplin that Triller allegedly misused.
At the time of the Sony Music lawsuit, a spokesperson for Triller said that it removed the label’s catalog from the platform and that Sony’s complaint “grossly mischaracterized” events.
Meanwhile, among Triller’s ongoing lawsuits is a missing-payment complaint from Universal Music Group filed at the beginning of the year. Triller has downplayed the suit as “a plain vanilla case that virtually every social network has faced in one form or another.”
Still, Triller’s inability to make payments in a timely fashion hasn’t prevented the company from going on a purported “purchasing spree” that included Julius Influencer Marketing — though this is thanks to the $310 million in equity funding the company secured shortly after settling a $28 million lawsuit with Swizz Beatz and Timbaland.