Old musicians want their download money

Four Allman Brothers band members sued Universal Music Group for more than $10 million in royalties from both hard-copy sales and downloadables.

Greg Allman, Jai Johanny Johanson, Butch Trucks, and Dickey Betts filed suit in the Southern District of New York saying that UMG has refused to pay the correct royalties for sales of songs contained on the "Capricorn Masters."

That set of tapes migrated from label to label, beginning with the band's original Capricorn Records, which filed for bankruptcy in 1979, and were then transferred to PolyGram, which was subsequently bought by Universal Music Group.

The Allman feud with UMG goes back at least seven years, when the same members of the band sued the conglomerate for using the Capricorn material without the band's knowledge or consent.

The current suit, however, focuses upon a clause in the contract between the band and Polygram, that says the band is entitled to half of the profits from third-party sales otherwise unspecified within the document. This means the artists would receive half the profit obtained through downloads from retailers like iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and the like.

According to the suit, UMG has paid only a fraction of what the band is entitled to, and has refused to renegotiate the royalties for downloads and ringtones, displaying "wanton disregard" for their contractual obligations as stipulated in the 1985 agreement.

Earlier this year, a group of 14 artists or their respective estates shared a similar grievance, suing UMG for over $6 million in unpaid royalties collected between 1999-2007. Plaintiffs in that case included the estates of Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sara Vaughan, and Woody Herman.