X takes on big music publishers in antitrust lawsuit
X Corp (yep, the company behind Twitter) is suing 18 major music publishers—including Sony, Universal, and Warner—claiming they teamed up to control music licensing and force X into pricey deals.
X says these publishers refused to sell individual song licenses, pressuring X to accept industrywide licensing terms at inflated rates, and used their power to send constant takedown notices targeting posts with copyrighted songs.
Why it matters:
X argues this has hurt both the platform and its users—thousands of posts were removed and over 50,000 accounts suspended, leading to lost ad revenue.
This lawsuit follows a previous case where publishers accused X of letting nearly 1,700 songs be posted without permission.
Now, after getting most of those claims dismissed in 2024, X is pushing back against what it calls unfair collective licensing demands.
The legal fight between social media and the music industry just got even more interesting.