Music company won’t back down from alleged copyright infringement

On the music-video app Triller anybody can be Tom Petty, Madonna or Neil Young.

(Cue record scratch.)

Not so fast, says Wixen Music Publishing Inc., which filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles this week accusing the increasingly popular TikTok rival Triller of unlawfully providing dozens of its licensed songs for users to create their own short videos.

Wixen licenses composition rights to more than 50,000 songs by over 2,000 clients, including “some of the most popular and acclaimed musical artists of the last 100 years,” according to the suit, accessed by Bloomberg Law.

In its $50 million suit, the music company claims that Triller has been “willfully infringing” its musical compositions by allowing its users to include them in videos without authorization or compensation, according to Billboard Magazine, which also reported on the suit.

Responding to the lawsuit, Triller CEO Mike Lu told reporters “we look forward to our day in court where hopefully we can stop them from doing this to others who may not have the resources to fight them and give in to their extortionist demands.”