Fred Durst Limp Bizkit Sues UMG Label Regarding Music Royalties

Fred Durst, vocalist of Limp Bizkit (Wikipedia)

JAKARTA - Frontman Limp Bizkit group, Fred Durst filed a lawsuit regarding the payment of music royalties. The lawsuit was filed with Universal Music Group (UMG) which oversees them all this time.

According to Fred, at least the label owes around USD200 million of Limp Bizkit's royalties. Legal representatives Fred said his client had not received proper royalties for decades of his career.

The lawsuit was filed by Fred Durst on October 8 through the Los Angeles federal court. He accused the label of implementing a complicated and opaque system, so the benefits to musicians were far from expectations.

Claims from the 54-year-old vocalist, the label deliberately made a large budget to cover production costs, from recordings to shooting video clips, reaching 43 million dollars for several years.

The label is said to have not paid royalties because the money generated has not covered the production costs. This was denied by Fred and his attorney.

UMG's failure to issue royalties statements in particular from 1997-2004 was the band's peak of fame and during the period during which they made sales that broke records with respect to its most popular albums showed that UMG was deliberately hiding the true number of sales, and thus royalties, which matured and became Limp Bizkit's right to unfairly save the profits for itself, read Fred Durst's demands reported by Loudwire, October 9.

Therefore, Fred demands financial transparency from the label to find out the real reality. He believes that during the Limp Bizkit heyday, the money generated was much bigger than the label said.

This case is still ongoing, and Fred plans to stop their decades-old cooperation. He will seek copyright for their works so far and remove them from the label.