Free Republic

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katy Perry, her collaborators and her record label must pay more than $2.78 million because the pop star’s 2013 hit “Dark Horse” copied a 2009 Christian rap song, a federal jury decided Thursday. It was an underdog victory for rapper Marcus Gray, a relatively obscure artist once known as Flame, whose 5-year-old lawsuit survived constant court challenges and a trial against top-flight attorneys for Perry and the five other music-industry heavyweights who wrote her song. The amount fell well short of the nearly $20 million sought by attorneys for Gray and the two co-writers of “Joyful...

Paul McCartney achieves his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart in over 36 years, as his new studio effort, Egypt Station, bows atop the list. The set, which was released on Sept. 7 via MPL/Capitol Records, launches with a larger-than-expected 153,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Sept. 13 according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 147,000 were in traditional album sales. The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units are comprised of traditional album sales, track...

The Beach Boys have had more Top 40 singles than any other American band and are the best selling American band ever, yet their career is marred by drug abuse, the untimely deaths of Dennis and Carl Wilson, the very public mental breakdown of chief songwriter and singer Brian Wilson, and a relentless history of litigation and acrimony among the surviving members (Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and Mike Love all tour separately, though Love now owns the Beach Boys name after a protracted legal battle). Theirs is the story of unparalleled triumphs and soul-searing tragedies. Yet the popularity of the...

In what turned out to be a nightmare for the defendant, a federal jury on Thursday ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs. Record companies were awarded $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million. This is the second time Thomas-Rasset went to trial on the matter. The single mother from Minnesota had planned to appeal the first ruling that came down from a different federal court in October 2007. But the judge in that case decided he had given the jury erroneous instructions and a new trial was ordered. Thomas-Rasset may wish she had...