Members of the heavily influential prog-rock group King Crimson and their mechanical rights holder Declan Colgan Music Ltd have taken issue with the rates of recompense for the use of their 1969 hit “21st Century Schizoid Man” from the album titled; In the Court of the Crimson King. The song’s lyrical hook was used famously in Kanye West’s 2010 track “Power” which appeared on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. With Members of the band listed within the credits for the song. Since its release via the Universal Music Group Ltd, “Power” has racked up close to 134 million streams on YouTube (as well as millions more across a range of streaming platforms).
As reported in Variety; “When DCM became aware of West’s copyright infringement, they contacted UMG, who — along with West and his production company Rock the World — signed an agreement with DCM two months later legally allowing West to sample the King Crimson track in return for a 5.33% royalty on each copy of “Power” that was sold or “otherwise exploited. According to the terms of the license agreement, UMG are required to pay DCM a royalty on the same terms that West receives royalties from the track. And under the terms of West’s agreement with UMG at the time, the royalty figure for a streaming track was equivalent to that of a track on a physical CD.”
“However, DCM claim in their lawsuit, which was filed in the U.K. High Court last month, that UMG “has failed, and continues to fail, to comply with its royalty accounting obligations in respect of one mode of exploitation, namely the making available of the Power recording to consumers through so-called ‘streaming’ services.”
Essentially, this makes UMG potentially liable to pay back all of the streaming royalties based on the sums they would be receiving through physical CD sales (as was stipulated in the 2010 contract). Yet up until now, UMG has been paying a proportionate percentage of what they receive from the streaming platforms. With Spotify for instance, it is estimated that each stream makes an earning of $0.0033. This therefore means that members of King Crimson have been cultivating far less than what was proposed in the contractual obligation.
The KC guitarist Robert Fripp made his feelings clear in a Facebook post. Stating that he has enlisted the help of Ian Mill QC of Blackstone Chambers, who recently won the case which saw Ed Sheeran charged with plagiarism. You can see Fripp’s post down below:
