Jermaine Dupri Might Lose Music Catalog in Latest Lawsuit

[Deleted]

Jermaine Dupri has been working his way out of the red. He's paid off a $3 million tax lein and saved his Atlanta mansion from foreclosure. Now, another bank is after him.

Dupri reportedly took out a $4.9 million loan from SunTrust Bank in 2009. He paid off more than half of the loan, but then the checks stopped coming in, the bank alleges. The bank is suing him for $1.9 million for defaulting on the loan, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Dupri backed the loan with the copyrights to his own music and songs from the So So Def catalog along with his Briarwood Court recording studios. The bank was in a deal with Dupri to acquire some of his music in return for nulling the debt, but the deal did not go through. No word on which catalog it was.

This past February, Dupri celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the his So So Def label with a star-studded concert that included Jay-Z, Usher and the label's Kris Kross, Da Brat, Jagged Edge, Xscape, Bow Wow and more.

www.vibe.com/article/jermaine-dupri-might-lose-music-catalog-latest-lawsuit

[elementd5]

All those writing/producing royalties and he's broke? That really is unimaginable.

[Deleted]

Jun 1, 2013 16:11:24 GMT -5 elementd5 said:

All those writing/producing royalties and he's broke? That really is unimaginable.

So many of these hip-hop artists do not know how to manage their money.

[ListenToItTwice]

What a tragic loss.

[Janhova's Witness]

"There's people whose money goes and people whose money grows, and she's very astute with her finances."

– Janet Jackson's publicist

[Deleted]

no wonder Mariah keeps using him for a few songs and giving him at least one single per album...she's just trying to help a dude eat. bless her heart.

i would hope he isn't actually going to lose his entire catalog...he's done enough work that i would think his material overall (the so-so def publishing + anything he's written on) is worth more than 1.9 million. if he's let it dwindle down to worth less than that his financial management skills are even worse than they seem now. either way, smh at him having to reach this point. for him to have no liquid resources is a mess. the worst part is he took that loan out in 2009, which is a mere 4-5 years after Confessions and TEOM. how do you go broke so soon after working on two big blockbusters? it's not like he only got to do album tracks or flop singles.

[Glove Slap]

Jun 1, 2013 16:11:24 GMT -5 elementd5 said:

All those writing/producing royalties and he's broke? That really is unimaginable.

This. He's had a hand in a very good number of songs that get healthy recurrent play to this day. He must get a bunch of checks every month. This is just incredibly horrible financial management on his part.

[Deleted]

You should've wifed her when you had the chance honey, you could have been a Jackson .

[Dammn Baby]

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Jun 1, 2013 23:39:47 GMT -5 Janhova's Witness said:

"There's people whose money goes and people whose money grows, and she's very astute with her finances."

– Janet Jackson's publicist

Love that quote!

[velaxti]

Wow. This is quite scary to read. :( Some people get too carried away.

[dzjx]

What actually is a music catalog? I thought when an artist made music they release it with a label, the label takes a cut as does the distributor, and the artist gets a cut (10%??). don't the labels own the catalog? I've wondered this for a while and there isn't much information out there on this?

[Deleted]

Jun 12, 2013 16:25:20 GMT -5 dzjx said:

What actually is a music catalog? I thought when an artist made music they release it with a label, the label takes a cut as does the distributor, and the artist gets a cut (10%??). don't the labels own the catalog? I've wondered this for a while and there isn't much information out there on this?

Here is an article that does a fairly good job of explaining how everyone involved in making music gets paid imo. This part in particular best sums up your question about catalogs:

recording artists and songwriters do not earn royalties in the same way. Recording artists earn royalties from the sale of their recordings on CDs, cassette tapes, and, in the good old days, vinyl. Recording artists don't earn royalties on public performances (when their music is played on the radio, on TV, or in bars and restaurants). This is a long-standing practice that's based on copyright law and the fact that when radio stations play the songs, more CDs and tapes are sold. Songwriters and publishers, however, do earn royalties in these instances -- as well as a small portion of the recording sales.

The only current instance in which artists earn royalties for "public performances" is when the song is played in a digital arena (like in a Webcast or on satellite radio), is non-interactive (meaning the listener doesn't pick and choose songs to hear), and the listener is a subscriber to the service.

As soon as a song is written, the writer(s) own the copyright. Most writers then assign, or transfer, the rights to a publishing company that shops the song around to record labels, tv shows, and movies; in return for doing this the publisher takes a cut of the royalties from these things (default is a 50/50 split between the writers and the publisher, however this can be different depending on the particulars of the arrangement). When people refer to music catalogs in this sense, they are referring to a catalog of song copyrights that a person or publishing company owns or has had assigned to them.  (One thing I want to note here - if you're the kind of person who likes to read album credits, you will often see multiple publishing companies listed under each song. This is usually b/c there is more than one writer, and the writers have their own small publishing imprints and/or handle their publishing through different companies.)

Technically, labels do not actually own song copyrights; labels own catalogs of sound recordings (the actual studio recordings of an artist singing a song). Like the artists, retailers, and distributor if a third party was used to handle it, they make their revenue from the sales rather than the public performances. With that said, many labels also have a 'sister' publishing company, so in effect the publishing is owned by the same people. If you hear of someone selling or buying a catalog (or in JD's case, possibly losing it), they're usually referring to the copyrights, not sound recordings - not to say that sound recordings are worthless but copyrights have more future value (i.e. passive income) in them than sound recordings do.

This is why it's often said that the real money is in writing and publishing. While even a very popular album or song's sales will surely dwindle in a certain amount of time, recurrent airplay and other licensing opportunities give writers and publishers more long-term earning potential, and just more earning opportunities in general. Plus, a writer gets a bigger royalty percentage from the copyrights than an artist usually does from the sales (unless the writer is an idiot who gives away all his rights, or a song has so many writers on it that the writer slice of the pie has to be split up into tiny slivers). Singer-songwriters sometimes agree to controlled composition clauses in which they give up a percentage of their sales royalties to the label, but since they have their songwriter royalties, even these guys are likely going to earn more than they would if they didn't write and were only earning that 10% sales cut.

In JD's case it's particularly embarrassing b/c he's written on many big hits AND he owns both a label and a publishing company to handle his songs. And this is not even mentioning what he got paid to produce for other artists. He's generated short-term and long-term cash flow from every avenue possible and there is simply no excuse for him to be in this predicament.

[Me. I Am l!nk!nfan815...]

^Thank you for posting that. Very informative.

[dzjx]

Yes thank you that was great, really informative. So if an artist then lets say writes a song, for simplicity's sake lets say Justin Timberlake writes a song on his own, he wants it on the album to release so then he assigns the copyright to Sony/ATV publishing and all his other songs, does this mean that Sony/ATV own the catalog? And that people who own their own catalog have to have their own publishing imprint?

[Deleted]

dzjx yes to the Sony/ATV example.

As to people who own their own publishing catalogs, they don't have to own their own publishing imprint for this to be possible b/c when you write a song you own the copyright by default, so if you don't assign it to anyone all of the publishing royalties go to you. However, in practice it usually works out that they have their own imprint.

It is common for artists to create their own publishing labels but I'm not sure if this is because a) they created a 'shadow' company through which to receive all their royalty checks (this might be done for tax purposes) or b) they're just being smart and getting in on the publishing percentage share, along with the writer share that they would be due. It could be both. Most of the time the artist (or rather, the artist's publishing co.) is signed under a larger company anyway b/c the larger company has more reach.

[esoteric76]

Butterscotch - great points all around. This is tricky stuff that few really understand and you explained it very well.