LONDON, Jan 14 \u2014 London\u2019s High Court on Wednesday began hearing a lawsuit brought against the singer Sting by his former Police bandmates claiming some US$2 million (RM8.09 million) in unpaid streaming royalties.<\/p>\n
Guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland are taking legal action against Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, arguing they are entitled to the added royalties.<\/p>\n
None of the band members was in court at the start of a two-day preliminary hearing.<\/p>\n
Sting is contesting the pair\u2019s claim that they are entitled to \u201cin excess of two million US dollars\u201d in so-called performance royalties of songs recorded as The Police, according to the court documents seen by AFP.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs are relying on a nearly 50-year-old verbal agreement stipulating that each member of the group should receive 15 per cent of the royalties generated by the other members\u2019 compositions.<\/p>\n
Sting, the trio\u2019s bassist and singer, composed all their hits, from Roxanne to Message in a Bottle.<\/p>\n
Consequently he receives by far the largest share of the group\u2019s royalties.<\/p>\n
The Police recorded five albums which were released between 1978 and 1983.<\/p>\n
The original agreement acknowledged the, at times, crucial contributions of the other two members, such as Summers\u2019 guitar arpeggios on Every Breath You Take.<\/p>\n
The verbal agreement reached in 1977 was later formalised through a written agreement in 1981.<\/p>\n
A further agreement reiterated, albeit vaguely, the terms in 1997, before the existence of streaming.<\/p>\n
The terms were reaffirmed in 2016 in an agreement intended to settle all financial disputes between the members of the group whose relationship by then had long become strained.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cstreaming\u201d, however, was not explicitly mentioned.<\/p>\n
The dispute concerns the classification of revenue generated from services such as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music for the purpose of royalty distribution.<\/p>\n
Streaming revenue is traditionally divided between so-called \u201cmechanical\u201d royalties, collected for each reproduction of a composition, such as records, and so-called \u201cperformance\u201d royalties, paid for the broadcast of songs, for example, on the radio.<\/p>\n
But only mechanical royalties are included in the 2016 agreement, something Summers and Copeland consider contrary to the spirit of the original 1977 agreement.<\/p>\n
They are demanding their share of all streaming revenue. Representatives for Sting, who sold his catalogue to Universal in 2022 for a reported US$250 million, have called the legal action an \u201cillegitimate\u201d attempt to reinterpret the agreement.<\/p>\n
They argue that some of the sums paid could actually constitute overpayment. \u2014 AFP\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Jan 14 \u2014 London\u2019s High Court on Wednesday began hearing a lawsuit brought against the singer Sting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[142776,434,18,117,19,17,142773,142777,142774,142778,142775],"class_list":{"0":"post-284053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-andy-summers-stewart-copeland","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-london-high-court-lawsuit","15":"tag-performance-royalties-music","16":"tag-sting-streaming-royalties-dispute","17":"tag-streaming-revenue-classification","18":"tag-the-police-band-royalties"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}