Lit — the rock band best known for their 1999 hit My Own Worst Enemy — are suing Sony Music Entertainment (SME) for alleged breach of contract, claiming the major has underpaid them over USD $800,000 in streaming royalties.
The complaint, filed March 2 in the Southern District of New York, was brought by band members Jeremy Popoff, Alan “Ajay” Popoff, Kevin Baldes, and the Allen Shellenberger Living Trust, the estate of the band’s late drummer.
According to the filing, obtained by MBW, and which you can read in full here, the four originally signed their exclusive recording agreement with RCA Records – now part of Sony Music – in October 1998.
The central allegation: Sony has been paying Lit’s audio streaming royalties at a flat 14% rate, when their contract actually requires those royalties to be calculated on a “Net Receipts” basis — typically a far more favorable formula for artists, since it’s pegged to the revenue the label actually collects from DSPs.
The band claim their deal explicitly distinguishes between digital downloads and streams, with the latter treated more like a master use or sync license — triggering the net receipts calculation. Sony, they allege, has ignored that distinction for years.
The complaint alleges that Sony carried out these breaches “with full knowledge of the vast number of similarly situated artists materially impacted by Defendant’s intentional breaches of its own contractual language”.
The lawsuit also raises two further allegations. The band allege Sony also applied the wrong formula to video streaming royalties, paying roughly 17% instead of a rate based on 50% of net receipts.
And they claim Sony never applied the escalated royalty rates their deal calls for once their album A Place in the Sun crossed gold and platinum sales thresholds — bumps that should have taken their rate from 14% up to 15%.
My Own Worst Enemy has racked up over 500 million streams on Spotify alone, according to the complaint, and A Place in the Sun was certified platinum in the US.
The track won the Billboard Music Award for the biggest modern rock song of 1999, and the band say they have continued touring consistently, introducing their catalogue to new generations of fans. That ongoing streaming activity, the band argue, makes Sony’s alleged use of the wrong formula all the more costly.
The group also claim that Sony largely stopped engaging with their concerns. The plaintiffs say they first raised accounting objections in July 2023 and kept pressing through 2025. Sony, according to the complaint, initially offered a limited defense of its position — and then from late April 2024 stopped responding to the band’s counsel altogether for the rest of that year.
During the entirety of the dispute, the filing states, “SME has never provided a coherent position supporting its ‘interpretation’ of the streaming provision at issue.”
Beyond the alleged royalty shortfall, the band claim Sony’s underreporting reduced their pension contributions and affected their eligibility for health insurance through SAG-AFTRA — a consequence they describe as particularly urgent.
Lit are seeking full damages, attorneys’ fees, and a jury trial. MBW has reached out to Sony Music for comment.
The lawsuit adds to a growing list of legacy artists challenging the way major labels calculate streaming royalties under deals that predate the rise of Spotify and its rivals.
Similar disputes have been brought in recent years by Enrique Iglesias against Universal, by Four Tet against Domino Records, and by the rap duo Black Sheep against UMG — all of which centered on how streaming income should be categorized under pre-streaming-era contracts.Music Business Worldwide
