Glassnote Entertainment Group, the former indie record label for Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, has sued the artist for streaming royalties he has allegedly collected.
Glassnote claims it has paid Glover nearly $8 million and expects to pay him another $2 million in royalties in the next month, according to TMZ, plus that Glover made a $1.5 million demand from the label to resolve streaming royalty disputes.
Glover signed with Glassnote in 2011 and, as Gambino, released three albums under the mantle including the Grammy-winning Awaken, My Love! And its hit “Redbone.”
The label filed for declaratory judgment with the U.S. District Court in Southern New York District, according to Variety. It says it is entitled to half of SoundExchange payouts for what is called “non-interactive digital performance royalties,” the kind that is paid out by Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM, etc. Glassnote claims it is entitled to a 50 percent share of all those royalties with the other half mostly due to Glover, Variety reported.
However, Glover signed with RCA Records in January and claims he’s entitled to 100 percent of those performance royalties and has been collecting the SoundExchange royalties directly.
“In late 2017, the License Agreement expired,” the complaint reportedly says. “Shortly thereafter, Glover, apparently unsatisfied with the approximately $10 million in royalties already paid or due to him by Glassnote and the 45% of the public performance royalties from SoundExchange, took the position that he was entitled to the entirety of Glassnote’s 50% share of public performance royalties from SoundExchange – and that Glassnote was not entitled to any such royalty.”