Weird Al Yankovic is upset over some digital royalties, but it's not totally due to the whole "sale vs. license" reason.
Along with underpaid royalties on download sales, Yankovic is suing Sony over royalties that they collected when they took an equity stake in YouTube back in 2006 in exchange for the use of their company's music/videos. Al's contention is that, when the agreement took place, his video for White & Nerdy was one of the most viewed pieces on YouTube so "a portion of Sony's equity share in YouTube is directly apportionable and allocable to White & Nerdy, as well as other content created by Yankovic."
He is looking for $2 million in underpaid royalties and another $2.5 million from the Sony/YouTube deal.
Yankovic has brought in the big guns for this one, the law firms Gordon, Gordon & Schnapp (New York) and King & Ballow (Nashville). Richard Busch is a partner in the latter where he was responsible for the initial lawsuit between Eminem's F.B.T. Productions and Interscope that set the precedent for all the current lawsuits over download royalties.
Busch told the Tennesseean "The question becomes what proportion of revenues should artists be receiving when record labels are making money off them in non-traditional ways. There are numerous issues on the cutting edge that are similar and relate to revenues being received by the record labels, such as advertising, general advances, and lawsuit settlements, for example, that artists have a right to share in. I would expect claims like this, if not identical, to be made as the landscape evolves."
