Wixen Music Publishing has filed an amended complaint against Meta Platforms, more than doubling both its damages demand and the number of works at issue in its copyright infringement case.
The first amended complaint, filed on Friday (May 15) in a US District Court in California, lists 681 works – up from the 331 cited in Wixen‘s original lawsuit filed in January – and seeks at least $102.15 million in statutory damages, up from $49.65 million.
Wixen, in the latest filing, which you can read here, says it believes the total number of infringed works to be “well over one thousand.”
The original complaint, filed on January 23, accused Meta of continuing to make Wixen’s catalog available in its Music Library for use in Reels videos and other content across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp – without authorization or compensation – after the companies’ licensing agreement expired on December 10, 2025.
The amended filing retains all of those copyright claims, but substantially expands the defamation, trade libel, and contractual interference allegations that accompanied the original Wixen suit.
Wixen now seeks maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work infringed, plus at least $20 million in defamation damages.
Wixen, founded by Randall Wixen in 1978, says it administers more than 100,000 songs for over 2,000 clients.
The publisher first licensed its catalog to Facebook (now Meta) in March 2018.
According to the complaint, negotiations to renew the agreement began in March 2025 but broke down after Meta sought to cut the license rates to “a small fraction” of what Wixen and its clients had received over the previous seven years.
The amended complaint significantly expands on the alleged tactics Meta employed during and after those negotiations.
Wixen alleges that in late October 2025 – while the license was still active – Meta began removing the music of certain Wixen clients from its platforms, then falsely told those clients and their representatives that Wixen was responsible for the removal.
The complaint states that Meta told clients that their music was removed because Meta “was unable to renew its agreement with Wixen” and that Wixen “was muting and blocking the clients’ music” on Meta’s platforms.
“These statements were misleading and false,” the Wixen complaint states.
“Wixen had not muted or blocked its clients’ music from Meta’s [platforms] prior to the termination of the Wixen-Meta License.”
The amended complaint includes detailed accounts of the alleged impact on multiple former Wixen clients – identified anonymously – including a record label, a rock band, and the estate of a musician, each of whom allegedly terminated or otherwise disrupted their relationship with Wixen as a result of Meta’s statements.
In one instance, the complaint cites an email from Meta’s Natalie Echols – identified as the company’s North America Music Publishing Partnerships Manager – in which she allegedly directed a former Wixen client’s management to resolve what Wixen describes as a fabricated “relinquishment” dispute.
“These statements by Meta’s Natalie Echols are false and misleading, and intended to cause harm to Wixen’s reputation and make it more difficult for Wixen to solicit clients,” the amended complaint states.
Wixen alleges that Meta invented “a new, onerous, and flawed ‘relinquishment process'” and then blamed Wixen for not following it – when the publisher says it had already completed standard industry procedures to transfer rights.
The complaint alleges that where clients left Wixen as a result of Meta’s alleged pressure campaign, Meta “exacted further revenge by electing not to put their music back up and falsely blaming Wixen for Meta’s own decision.”
Wixen further alleges that Meta’s statements were disseminated to managers, attorneys, and other industry representatives – damaging the publisher’s reputation across the music business and making it “nearly impossible” to represent certain artists.
The amended complaint retains the allegation from the original filing that Meta’s motivation for reducing royalty payments to songwriters is to replace human-created music with AI-generated alternatives.
“Meta’s reason for slashing payments to songwriters is to replace human-generated, royalty-bearing music with royalty-free AI-generated music,” the complaint alleges.
It points to Meta’s development of AudioCraft, the company’s AI tool that generates music from text prompts, and notes that Meta “has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building artificial intelligence data centers in the US.”
“Meta’s reason for slashing payments to songwriters is to replace human-generated, royalty-bearing music with royalty-free AI-generated music.”
Wixen’s Amended complaint
The complaint also cites Meta’s own public statements about the value of human-created content, quoting Instagram head Adam Mosseri‘s December 31, 2025 post in which he wrote that “authenticity is becoming a scarce resource.”
According to the complaint, Meta announced in October 2025 that Reels was on track to generate $50 billion in advertising revenue over 12 months.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call at the time: “As video continues to grow across our apps, Reels now has an annual run rate
of over $50 billion.”
Meta reported total advertising revenue of $161 billion in 2024, according to the filing.
Wixen’s lawsuit is one of several copyright actions Meta faces from music rights holders over its use of music in Reels and its other platforms.
Eight Mile Style, co-publisher of hundreds of Eminem songs, sued Meta in May 2025 over similar claims.
Epidemic Sound has filed two separate copyright infringement suits against Meta – in 2022 and 2025 – alleging infringement of thousands of works across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Meta did not immediately respond to MBW’s request for comment.Music Business Worldwide
