AfterDawn: News

Sony Music office raided in Mexico after artist dispute

Mexican police have raided the offices of Sony Music in Mexico City this week, seizing master recordings, albums, and cover art of the Grammy award winning artist Alejandro Fernández.

The police were working from a court order.



Fernández spent the first 10 years of his career signed to Sony Music, but left in 2008 for a new deal with Universal. Sony was taking unreleased material from the popular singer, and making an album with it, even though the singer is no longer part of the label. Fernández believes Sony has no right to do so and received the court order.

"Sony assumed that they could take tracks that weren't part of previous albums and release them as an eighth album, as if it were new material, over which they had rights," said Jose Luis Caballero, Fernández's attorney. "It's perfectly clear that the company's contract is limited to seven albums."

During the raid, police seized almost 6500 CDs, master recordings and cover art.

Sony called the raid "surprising and disappointing" and adds "we trust that the Mexican courts will confirm our rights as soon as possible."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 8 Sep 2009 2:30

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• 11 comments

• Josipher

  muhahahaha! i personally find this bit of info very funny as they mostly are a part of organizations in which court orders are being obtained to find counterfeit goods that they have the rights to.. personally im crossing my fingers to a major lawsuit ^^

  8.9.2009 03:13 #1

• pphoenix

  Originally posted by Josipher: muhahahaha! i personally find this bit of info very funny as they mostly are a part of organizations in which court orders are being obtained to find counterfeit goods that they have the rights to.. personally im crossing my fingers to a major lawsuit ^^i fully concur, fair rights for artists these RIAA nubs continually preach about protecting the artists but it's them stealing from the artists & destroying the business.
  
  they are no longer the gatekeepers of media but they are still trying to dictate who gets air play & who they bully from ever getting noticed unless they sign through one of the RIAA shills.
  
  
  
  If sony payola (click here) wasn't bad enough to destroy indie competition you have this:
  
  Is it justified to steal from thieves? READ ON.
  
  
  RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
  http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml
  
  "With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"
  
  http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/24/141326/870
  
  RIAA, CRIA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, Ect:
  
  # Sony BMG Music Entertainment
  # Warner Music Group
  # Universal Music Group
  # EMI

  8.9.2009 03:32 #2

• KillerBug

  The music industry is dying, and they refuse to take steps to stop it. Instead, they push is closer to death by releasing terrible albums in 2 channel sound, and by trying to control what they don't own.
  
  The RIAA is evil, and will fall...it's just a question of how many years it will take, and how many artists it will destroy. I just hope no one starts bombing them...it might generate some sympathy for these evil bastards!

  8.9.2009 05:02 #3

• Mez

  Well I guess Sony is the biggest pirate of them all!
  
  They are certainly as evil as they are stupid. Too bad they are so powerful.

  8.9.2009 09:42 #4

• wabashman

  20 bucks says sony wins as the mexican court system is the most corrupt one in the world. slide 50 bucks to the judge/jury and you win.

  8.9.2009 09:42 #5

• xnonsuchx

  More people talking out their a**es! This depends on exactly the contents of the contract. Many (most?) contracts say the record company owns any recordings (not the songs themselves, but the recordings) made during the contractual period, since they often paid for the production of them, and usually have the right to produce compilations (even including unreleased material) after the contract has ended. Without a copy of the contract to review here, there's no valid basis for arguing who's right or wrong.

  8.9.2009 12:57 #6

• Tristan_2

  We don't know how long a company may have the rights to keep an artists song don't go say I'm siding with Sony I'm neutral here, however business do cheat an artist most of them do and yes the artist has the right to prevent Sony from distributing his/her song if they aren't with that label and go to court but to actually send officials and seize the songs by force acing like their in a P2P network via court order you gotta agree that is messed up.
  
  Why I am slightly for Sony in this cuz although a dif subject is how Youtube treats music companies who have a channel on youtube. Although WMG is still technically a youtube user but Warner Music Group has no videos and surprisingly are removed by copyright infringement. With this said and what I said above it things are really going insane in te music industry.

  8.9.2009 13:32 #7

• DVDdoug

  Originally posted by xnonsuchx: More people talking out their a**es! This depends on exactly the contents of the contract. Many (most?) contracts say the record company owns any recordings (not the songs themselves, but the recordings) made during the contractual period, since they often paid for the production of them, and usually have the right to produce compilations (even including unreleased material) after the contract has ended. Without a copy of the contract to review here, there's no valid basis for arguing who's right or wrong.RIGHT! Maybe it's a "standard contract" and Sony owns the recordings. Maybe Fernández's attorney is correct and anything more than 7 albums is a breach of contract???

  8.9.2009 17:32 #8

• KillerBug

  Many contracts are on a per-album basis. Even if Sony owns the recordings themselves (because they paid for the recording), they still would not own the actual song...that is the property of the artist, and cannot be sold or even performed by anyone else without permission.

  9.9.2009 01:23 #9

• kyo28

  Originally posted by xnonsuchx: More people talking out their a**es! This depends on exactly the contents of the contract. Many (most?) contracts say the record company owns any recordings (not the songs themselves, but the recordings) made during the contractual period, since they often paid for the production of them, and usually have the right to produce compilations (even including unreleased material) after the contract has ended. Without a copy of the contract to review here, there's no valid basis for arguing who's right or wrong.Exactly. Finally someone with some common sense in here. I love talking smack about big corporations as much as the next one but all depends on the contents of the contract.
  
  If the contract stipulated that all material created by the artist while under contract with Sony, is property of Sony, then they might very well be in their right to release that album, provided it contains only material created in that time period.

  9.9.2009 03:00 #10

• KillerBug

  "If the contract stipulated that all material created by the artist while under contract with Sony, is property of Sony, then they might very well be in their right to release that album, provided it contains only material created in that time period."
  
  Even with contracts like this, the songs themselves are often still owned by the artist. If it is a song that was released on one of the CDs sold by sony, then it probably belongs to sony. If it is just some song that they recorded a few takes of and then never released, then the song probably still belongs to the artist (though the actualy recordings belong to Sony). Such recordings can only be released with consent on both the Artist and the Label...but the artist can always just re-record the song, then Sony has no part in it at all.
  

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  9.9.2009 04:57 #11