If you’ve sung along to “Born in the U.S.A.” or tapped your feet to Pharrell playing on the radio in Vermont in recent years, it’s possible you were listening to the makings of a lawsuit.
The performance rights organization Global Music Rights (GMR) has filed a multi-million-dollar copyright lawsuit against a Vermont-based radio group that operates seven radio stations for allegedly playing popular songs on air without obtaining a license to do so.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington on Jan. 18, attorneys for GMR accused Vermont Broadcast Associates of making “a willful, calculated, and strategic decision not to obtain prior authorization to perform publicly the GMR Compositions and (hoping) that GMR would not find out or would choose not to enforce its rights.”
According to the complaint, various stations run by the group — including contemporary hit and Top 40 stations WMOO-FM, known as Moo 92, and WGMT-FM, known as Magic 97.7 — played 66 GMR-owned songs more than 1,600 times between 2017 and the date the lawsuit was filed without paying licensing fees.
Among those tunes, GMR said, were “Born in the U.S.A” by Bruce Springsteen and “Come Get it Bae” by Pharrell Williams.
During that same period, GMR claimed, the performance rights organization sent Vermont Broadcast Associates 10 licensing agreement offers, which the latter company did not accept, and a cease-and-desist letter. GMR is now seeking millions in damages.
“While we only turn to litigation as a last resort, it is long established U.S. law that GMR’s clients’ copyrighted works cannot be publicly performed without a license,” GMR’s general council, Emio Zizza, said in a press release about the lawsuit. “Station groups who don’t want to pay for a GMR license are not entitled to play GMR’s immensely popular catalog of songs, depriving creators of their due.”
The complaint also names Vermont Broadcast Associates’ owner Bruce James as a defendant.
In a written statement to VTDigger James said, “We support musicians and songwriters. I have the belief that this will be settled amicably.” He did not comment further.
Under U.S. copyright law, radio stations must have permission from songwriters and composers — or else the legal owners of their copyrighted works — to broadcast their songs on air. Songwriters and composers are usually represented by performance rights organizations like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, that offer broadcasters blanket licensing agreements for a fee.
Founded in 2013 by former Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, Global Music Rights is a performance rights organization that represents musicians including Drake, Lizzo, and Billy Idol.
The company spent over five years in court with the Radio Music Licensing Committee, an organization that represents over 10,000 radio stations, before the two sides finally hashed out licensing terms for its catalog in 2022.
In the wake of that lawsuit, GMR offered long-term licensing based on agreed-upon terms to all radio stations represented by the Radio Music Licensing Committee, the “vast majority” of which accepted, according to the press release. Vermont Broadcast Associates, whose stations are a part of the Radio Music Licensing Committee, according to the release, did not.
As a part of its suit against Vermont Broadcast Associates, GMR’s attorneys asked that James and the organization be required to pay it for damages, requesting the “maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each copyright infringed.”
