Elon Musk thinks the music industry acts like a cartel.
Musk’s X Corp filed a combative lawsuit against a raft of music publishers on Friday (January 9), accusing them of coordinating a shakedown via nearly 500,000 copyright takedown requests sent to the platform targeting videos containing music.
To X, this is evidence of dodgy conduct in the music industry, where music publishers – whether major or indie – collude anti-competitively, via the NMPA, to force digital services to pay over-the-odds for licensing.
To the NMPA? X’s complaints are the distracting squeals of an entity keen to escape paying its fair share for music.
NMPA chief David Israelite – who is personally cited multiple times in X’s legal filing – calls the platform’s suit “meritless”, and a “bad faith effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ legitimate right to enforce against X’s illegal use of their songs”.
Multiple elements of X’s suit are likely to leave music biz veterans scratching their heads.
For example, the social platform directly attacks Israelite for re-posting a video on X containing music the platform hadn’t licensed.
This, to Musk’s company, is a smoking gun – evidence that the NMPA itself “did not actually view analogous X posts in [its] takedown notices as problematic”.
But David Israelite doesn’t commercially gain from sharing a video on X…. X does.
That’s literally the point! Music rightsholders are demanding to be paid royalties by a service that monetizes their content at scale, globally, through advertising.
One does not require a SpaceX engineer’s brain to understand this.
X’s lawsuit hasn’t appeared in a vacuum, of course. It’s a retaliation.
A group of music publishers, all NMPA members, sued X in 2023, seeking damages of USD $250 million for the unlicensed use of around 1,700 songs.
Late last year, it appeared that both sides in this dispute were negotiating a settlement agreement in good faith.
Yet as 2026 begins, X has adopted a more typically Musk-ian strategy: launching a shock broadside against the music publishing community, stuffed with allegations of wrongdoing.
It’s done so despite rivals such as Meta, Alphabet/YouTube, and TikTok all having signed live and ongoing licensing agreements with the NMPA and/or its members.
X, which generates around USD $2.5 billion per year, according to Bloomberg – nearly all from advertising – is seeking ‘treble damages’ in its lawsuit… literally three times the damages that a judge, in a different universe, might award should they agree with X’s position.
We don’t expect you to read through the entire 53 pages of X’s suit (if you wish to try, MBW is hosting it here).
Even so, here are three particularly interesting/peculiar things that stood out to MBW…
1) X thinks the NMPA cheated Peloton – The same Peloton that says it’s ‘proud’ of its deal with music publishers.
The lawsuit cites Peloton as evidence of the NMPA’s alleged “broader playbook” of anticompetitive do-badding.
According to the complaint, when Peloton attempted to negotiate individual licenses with publishers, including Reservoir, Downtown, and Peer, in early 2019 – bypassing the NMPA – “all of those publishers ended negotiations with Peloton at nearly the same time”.
To X, this is a gotcha: proof that publishers won’t deal with services individually.
What X neglects to mention: those publishers – all independents – sued Peloton in March 2019 for USD $150 million over unlicensed music, a figure that was later increased to over $300 million.
Peloton confirmed at the time that it had already “partnered with each of the major music publishers” – meaning that this was no industrywide conspiracy: the majors had successfully struck their own unilateral deals with the exercise firm.
The indies, left out, then banded together.
“Peloton filed a counterclaim, alleging the NMPA was fixing prices through its collective licensing offers. The judge dismissed it.”
Here’s the kicker: fighting those indies and the NMPA in 2019, Peloton made the exact same antitrust argument X is now making.
Peloton filed a counterclaim, alleging the NMPA was fixing prices through its collective licensing offers, and engaging in a “concerted refusal to deal”.
The judge dismissed these claims in January 2020.
A month later, Peloton settled. Its Head of Music Paul DeGooyer called the resulting NMPA deal something Peloton was “very proud to have pioneered”, adding that the agreement would “ensure that songwriters are, and continue to be, fairly compensated”.
X’s lawyers may want to review that case in detail.
2) Before December 2021, takedowns were a trickle. X seems surprised this changed.
The lawsuit attempts to paint a dramatic before-and-after picture.
Before the NMPA campaign, X claims it received only sporadic takedown notices from individual publishers. It cites a May 2019 notice from Universal Music Group flagging just 25 posts, and a Warner Chappell notice around the same time identifying one post.
Then came December 2021. The NMPA began sending weekly notices, and in the first year alone targeted over 200,000 posts.
From December 2021, The NMPA began sending weekly notices, and in the first year alone targeted over 200,000 posts.”
X frames this escalation as evidence of an orchestrated pressure campaign.
But there’s another way to read it: the music publishing industry got organized.
After years of fragmented enforcement that nobody pursued properly, a trade association finally did what trade associations do – act collectively on behalf of its members, and hammer those using their copyrights without a license.
X may not like it. But the music industry presenting a united front on enforcement isn’t a conspiracy. It’s the NMPA doing its job.
3) X suggests publishers hatched their ‘scheme’ on the golf course – and that Musk’s platform doesn’t need to pay for ‘most’ songs
Fore! X’s lawsuit includes a full schedule of NMPA events where, X alleges, publishers had opportunities to coordinate their anti-X strategy.
These include golf tournaments at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, “Gold & Platinum Galas” in Nashville, and various annual meetings in New York.
“The Music Publishers have had many opportunities to meet and coordinate their licensing strategy at trade-association meetings across the country,” the complaint states, noting that these gatherings facilitated the exchange of “competitively sensitive information”.
Let’s set aside the fact that it would be reasonably difficult for companies to blueprint elaborate anticompetitive schemes while strolling to the back nine, or over prawn cocktails at industry awards dinners.
Instead, let’s focus on what matters: the ‘scheme’ that X is alleging surely requires no secret coordination.
When the majority of hit songs have multiple songwriters, often repped by multiple publishers, opt-in collective licensing becomes a practical solution for clearing music rights at scale.
“X is not interested in licensing musical compositions from every Music Publisher… X does not need licenses to all or even most musical compositions to provide a compelling experience for its users.”
X lawsuit
One of the punchiest quotes in X’s lawsuit?
“Despite NMPA’s insistence that X obtain licenses from all its members, X is not interested in licensing musical compositions from every Music Publisher.
“Unlike music streaming platforms, X does not need licenses to all or even most musical compositions to provide a compelling experience for its users, and it is therefore unreasonable and uneconomical for X to pay all Music Publishers for licenses.”
Instead, X thinks it would be fairer for music publishers to “compete heavily to secure one of [our] limited licensing agreement slots, such as by offering competitive pricing or innovative licensing terms.”
The obvious problem? X evidently has limited control over the music content that its hundreds of millions of users are uploading in videos.
Otherwise, the NMPA wouldn’t have been able to issue half a million copyright infringement claims against X-hosted content since 2023 – something X dismisses, perplexingly, as a “conspiracy” cooked up on golf courses.
Is this not a case of having your cake and eating it?
Honestly, we don’t need most of your songs. But if you issue takedowns against the content we’ve been monetizing to prove that we do? That’s an antitrust matter, bullies.Music Business Worldwide
