Music

Victory Records will start firing people unless Spotify re-uploads their music

by Tyler Munro

While they’ve become one of the punk scene’s most enduring labels, Tony Brummel’s Victory Records has had a tumultuous 26-year run, filled with lawsuits, fist-fight challenges and more scathing back-and-forths between lawyers than an Ally McBeal episode.

The latest setback, however, makes Brummel seem like a hair-swooping Bond villain. He recently got into a spat with Spotify, which resulted in the popular streaming service yanking the label’s entire catalogue offline, leaving reminiscent Hawthorne Heights fans with little recourse besides, like, buying a CD player or whatever.

According to Brummel, the dispute started over — guess what — money. He claims Spotify owes Victory Records unpaid royalties for as many as 53 million streams, a sum Billboard figures is upwards of $23,000. But fear not, Taking Back Sunday streamers: Tony Brummel has a plan.

And according to an internal e-mail being circulated, that plan is to start firing people unless Spotify gives him what he wants. Don’t worry, bands, you’re also expendable — he’ll start dropping acts if he has to. Rich (pardon the pun) given his propensity to sue over unfulfilled record contracts.

Obviously, this is a sticky situation for all involved. Brummel is playing chicken with a multi-billion dollar company that, frankly, has little to lose here, and he’s leveraging other people’s livelihoods to do it. And while we’re normally ones to side with the little guy in disputes like this, Victory Records haven’t exactly earned our faith over the years. This is, remember, the label that helped break Thursday big only to be sued years later over unpaid royalties. Hawthorne Heights once wrote a lengthy, public-facing rant about the label’s alleged fraudulent business practices. A Day To Remember took them to court saying they were owed more than $75,000. And Aiden claimed this past summer that they saw nothing their nearly 500,000 albums sold.

Most recently, Brummel and Victory Records entered into yet another dispute with ska-punk demigod Tomas Kalnoky’s Streetlight Manifesto. At first, word leaked that the band were being sued by the label for a whooping $1 million. Days later, Kanolky’s camp issued a correction: He’s being sued for $5 million.

So, to recap: While currently suing one of its artists for a reported $5 million, a label notorious for skimming from its bands has entered a pissing contest with a billion dollar company over $23,000. And until they get their way, they’re prepared to start laying people off.

In a lot of ways, this is a tragic Catch-22. In another, more direct way: It’s yet another indictment on the label that tortured teen-ears with “Ohio Is for Lovers” 11-years-ago.

While it’s a shame to see Brummel’s subordinates punished over something that’s probably his own fault, it’s easy to forget that he’s the kind of person who laughs when someone’s house burns down.

[h/t ibTimes]