Latest / Clone Wars: The Spinoff / Jermaine Dupri’s $18M Royalty Fight

Transcript

Jermaine Dupri’s $18M Royalty Fight · Clone Wars: The Spinoff

• 0:00
  Yo, we back.
• 0:02
  Clone Wars: The Spinoff, and today ain't about a new drop or a new deal,
• 0:07
  it's about an old bill finally coming due.
• 0:10
  Jermaine Dupri, the man who built So So Def from the ground up,
• 0:15
  just filed a lawsuit against Sony Music for eighteen million dollars.
• 0:18
  Let that sit for a second.
• 0:20
  Eighteen million.
• 0:21
  And this ain't some new artist getting played, this is Jermaine Dupri.
• 0:25
  So So Def gave us Kris Kross, Xscape, Da Brat, Jagged Edge,
• 0:31
  Bow Wow.
• 0:32
  He produced for Mariah Carey and Usher.
• 0:35
  Three decades, over two hundred million in gross revenue tied to that catalog.
• 0:40
  If a legacy like that can get shorted, everybody in this business needs to be paying
• 0:44
  attention.
• 0:45
  Hold on, how do you even short somebody at that level for that long?
• 0:49
  Like, don't major labels have accountants checking accountants?
• 0:52
  Walk me through what he's actually alleging.
• 0:55
  According to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court,
• 0:58
  Sony hid Kris Kross royalties in a completely separate accounting system for over
• 1:03
  twenty years without telling Dupri's side it even existed.
• 1:07
  The suit alleges producer and override royalties from Kris Kross's first two albums,
• 1:12
  Totally Krossed Out and Da Bomb, weren't reported at all until 2023.
• 1:17
  That's over two-point-two million dollars just from those two records.
• 1:22
  And it's not just Kris Kross.
• 1:23
  The lawsuit says Sony underreported over nine hundred sixty thousand dollars in
• 1:28
  producer royalties from Xscape's 1993 debut, and withheld more than a million in
• 1:34
  producer royalties from Da Brat's Funkdafied.
• 1:37
  Dupri's team is calling it a systemic pattern of contemptuous accounting practices,
• 1:42
  meaning this wasn't one clerical error, they're alleging a pattern across multiple
• 1:48
  artists and multiple decades.
• 1:50
  See, this is why the elders always told you: read your paperwork twice and then read
• 1:55
  it again.
• 1:56
  This ain't new.
• 1:58
  Labels have been running split ledgers and burying line items since before some of
• 2:02
  these new artists were born.
• 2:05
  The only thing that's new is somebody with enough resources finally pulling the
• 2:08
  thread all the way through.
• 2:10
  And think about the culture cost, not just the money.
• 2:13
  Kris Kross, Xscape, Da Brat, that's not a footnote, that's the sound of the 90s.
• 2:20
  When the money behind the culture gets buried in a hidden ledger for twenty years,
• 2:25
  it changes how the next generation of artists gets to build off that legacy,
• 2:29
  gets to sample it, gets to be inspired by it and actually see the family get paid.
• 2:35
  This is exactly why I check my distributor statement every single month even though
• 2:39
  I'm nowhere near that level yet.
• 2:41
  If a legend with a real business and real lawyers can get buried for twenty years,
• 2:46
  an indie artist getting one PDF a quarter from a distro service has to be even more
• 2:51
  locked in.
• 2:52
  You don't wait until you blow up to start auditing your own numbers.
• 2:56
  This is where an audit clause in your contract is worth more than a bigger advance.
• 3:02
  An audit right lets you or an independent accountant go into the label or
• 3:08
  publisher's books on a schedule and verify what you're owed.
• 3:12
  Pair that with knowing your statute of limitations, because in a lot of states you
• 3:17
  only have a window of years to formally dispute royalties once you discover the
• 3:23
  shortfall.
• 3:24
  Dupri's case leans on the discovery of the hidden ledger to argue the clock
• 3:29
  restarts.
• 3:30
  That's a real legal strategy, not just a complaint.
• 3:33
  Discipline is knowing your numbers before anybody has to sue for them.
• 3:39
  I don't care how small your deal is, get a real statement, get a real splits sheet,
• 3:45
  and put a date on when you're gonna sit down and actually read it.
• 3:50
  Waiting until you're a legend to check your paperwork means you already gave away
• 3:54
  twenty years of interest on money that was yours.
• 3:57
  And protect the brand side too.
• 3:59
  Your name, your sound, your image, that's intellectual property just like the
• 4:04
  masters and the publishing.
• 4:06
  So So Def is a brand as much as it's a catalog.
• 4:10
  If you let anybody else control the story of what you built,
• 4:14
  they can bury that in a ledger just as easy as they bury a royalty statement.
• 4:18
  For everybody listening who's independent, here's the move.
• 4:22
  Request your royalty statements in writing, every quarter, not just when you
• 4:26
  remember to ask.
• 4:27
  Get your splits documented and registered with your PRO the day the song is
• 4:32
  finished, not after it starts making money.
• 4:35
  And find one person, an accountant, a business manager, whoever,
• 4:39
  whose only job is to sit on your side of the table and check the math.
• 4:44
  Let's bring it home the way we always do.
• 4:46
  Knowledge is one.
• 4:48
  Knowledge of self means knowing your own contract, your own splits,
• 4:51
  your own numbers before anybody else tells you what you're owed.
• 4:55
  That's the foundation everything else in this episode sits on top of.
• 4:59
  Wisdom is two, and wisdom is knowledge applied.
• 5:02
  It's one thing to know an audit clause exists, it's another to actually use it,
• 5:07
  to actually hire the accountant, to actually send the letter requesting your
• 5:10
  statements.
• 5:11
  Generational wealth isn't built on knowing better, it's built on doing better with
• 5:16
  what you know.
• 5:17
  Understanding is three, that's when knowledge and wisdom come together and you truly
• 5:22
  get the game, not just your corner of it.
• 5:26
  Understand the business well enough that nobody can bury your money in a ledger for
• 5:30
  twenty years and call it an accident.
• 5:33
  That's the episode, family.
• 5:34
  Jermaine Dupri fighting for eighteen million dollars and twenty years of buried
• 5:39
  royalties so the rest of us know exactly what to check in our own paperwork.
• 5:44
  Go read your statements, go check your splits, and we'll catch you next time on
• 5:48
  Clone Wars: The Spinoff.