A live performance from Limp Bizkit, which has filed a massive royalties-related lawsuit against Universal Music Group. Photo Credit: ECarterSterling
Universal Music Group (UMG) could owe Limp Bizkit north of $200 million – at least according to the 30-year-old band, which is suing for unpaid royalties, copyright infringement, breach of contract, and more.
Limp Bizkit, frontman Fred Durst, and his Flawless Records label fired off the sweeping 60-page complaint today, alleging massive royalties underpayments, the misrepresentation of various accounts as unrecouped, “fraudulent accounting practices,” and a whole lot else.
As recapped in the legal text, these and other allegations can be traced to an initial 1996 agreement between Limp Bizkit and Flip Records, which, besides having a JV deal in place with Interscope, would later sell half its stake in the band’s royalties to UMG. Thus, the leading label is said to be responsible for paying the relevant royalties to Flip and the plaintiffs alike.
Amended multiple times before being replaced by a fresh Interscope agreement in late 2000, the Flip contracts (the royalty terms of which have allegedly been left in place) cover Limp Bizkit’s first three albums. Meanwhile, among several additional things, the UMG/Interscope pact rather unsurprisingly compels the major label to provide the band with bi-annual royalty statements, the suit describes.
Lastly, in terms of pertinent background details, the late 90s also delivered a JV deal between Durst’s aforementioned Flawless Records and Interscope; Durst, seemingly part of Interscope for a time, signed acts (like Puddle of Mudd) in exchange for a stake in the profits and the masters at hand, the document shows.
Fast forward to April of 2024, when Durst voiced royalties-related concerns upon hiring new reps. (The action doesn’t appear to dive into the artist’s possibly questionable prior team.) “Durst retained new representation and explained that he had not received any money for any Limp Bizkit exploitations—ever,” the text reads.
These new reps were “shocked” upon learning as much, including because of the band’s apparent commercial comeback (referring in part to an expected 793 million streams for Limp Bizkit by 2024’s end).
The focus quickly shifted to the relevant royalty statements – at which point Durst informed his team that he hadn’t received any such breakdowns “because UMG told him over the years that it was not required to provide them since his account was still so far from recoupment.”
That set in motion a “further investigation,” first in the form of obtaining access to the UMG portal. Upon gaining said access in April of 2024, the plaintiffs’ business managers identified cumulative due Limp Bizkit royalty balances of almost $1.04 million, per the document.
From there, the plaintiffs pushed to receive the payment immediately and were allegedly told that they’d have to provide basic forms and bank verification. More pressingly, the statements allegedly showed that the accounts had been recouped since 2019 but had also been “fraudulently reclassified as ‘unrecouped’ to prevent payment.”
“UMG did not explain why it failed to alert Limp Bizkit that it had over $1 million sitting with UMG that was payable to Limp Bizkit, why UMG had never even obtained the documents and forms it allegedly needed in order to actually make these payments, or why UMG could not use the documents already in their possession that it had used to pay Plaintiffs advances in the past,” the suit continues.
Of course, the specifics laid the groundwork for more intense scrutiny yet, which allegedly led to the plaintiffs’ discovering a number of missing royalty statements (some dating back to 1997) and claims of “recoupment costs for an extraordinarily long time.”
The appropriate accounts (for Limp Bizkit as well as Flawless) were allegedly overdrafted with “unsubstantiated costs” designed to make them appear unrecouped, the action claims in many more words.
Conversations with UMG execs over the summer are said to have failed to provide an adequate explanation, though higher-ups attributed the situation to a once-off software issue as well as $43 million or so in advances allegedly paid to Limp Bizkit.
The plaintiffs say the latter sum is “grossly inflated,” and when reviewing the appropriate (incomplete) royalty statements, they pinpointed closer to $13 million in advances, per the suit. Especially given the group’s sales resurgence, early albums should have recouped and started paying royalties long ago, according to the filing parties.
In any event, late August saw Limp Bizkit receive the aforementioned $1.04 million (before this, “Limp Bizkit had never received any royalties from UMG”), with $2.35 million paid to Flawless (which “had never received any profit sharing revenue from UMG”) around the same time.
The alleged lack of royalty statements, the alleged underpayments, and more then prompted the plaintiffs to seek the contracts’ termination – hence the complaint, which is looking to nix the deals and compel sizable damages payments. Limp Bizkit and Durst estimate that UMG owes them “in excess of $200 million due to the rescission of these agreements,” the action spells out.
