Elon Musk’s X Corp sues major music publishers in licensing dispute

X Corp, owned by Elon Musk, has launched legal proceedings against a group of leading music publishers, alleging they have been “colluding” to pressure the platform into accepting “supracompetitive rates” for music licences.

As reported by Music Business Worldwide, X Corp filed an antitrust lawsuit on Friday, January 9, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The case names the National Music Publishers’ Association and 18 publishing companies as defendants, including Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Corp, Warner Chappell Music and BMG Rights Management, alongside other publishers such as Reservoir Media, led by its Iranian-Canadian founder and CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi.

The complaint claims that the NMPA and the publishers engaged in a “coordinated campaign” that flooded X with copyright infringement notices. According to the filing, the platform received 200,000 takedown requests during Musk’s first year running X, a figure that has since climbed to “nearly 500,000” from 2023 onwards.

X Corp further alleges that this “scheme” was designed to “coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the industry as a whole,” arguing that the publishers’ reliance on the NMPA, rather than negotiating directly with X, “denies the benefit of competition between music publishers”.

In its coverage, Music Business Worldwide notes that rival platforms such as YouTube and Meta were subject to comparable takedown activity, but ultimately reached licensing agreements with the NMPA. YouTube alone is reported to have paid around $8 billion to the music industry between June 2024 and 2025.

Responding to the lawsuit, NMPA president and CEO David Israelite accused X of continuing to use music without proper licences, describing the action as a “meritless lawsuit” and a “bad faith effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ legitimate right to enforce against X’s illegal use of their songs.”

[Via: Music Business Worldwide]