Salt-N-Pepa gets major legal backing in their UMG masters fight, with lawyers arguing the case could reshape how artist ownership works in the music industry.
Salt-N-Pepa just got some serious legal muscle in their fight with UMG over their masters, and the lawyers stepping in are making it crystal clear this case could totally reshape how artist ownership works in the music business.
The National Society of Entertainment & Arts Lawyers is now backing Cheryl James and Sandra Denton, arguing the whole dispute shows a long-standing imbalance that’s been baked into the music industry for decades.
The group spelled it out directly in their filing:
“Congress has long viewed ‘the author [as] the fundamental beneficiary of copyright under the Constitution.’ At the same time, Congress has been clear-eyed in its recognition that economic realities routinely force authors to transfer away the benefits afforded by copyright to industry intermediaries. Moreover, in many cases, such deals between authors and industry are imbalanced, both financially and otherwise, in favor of intermediaries.”
That framing puts Salt-N-Pepa’s lawsuit in a much bigger context.
This isn’t just about one group trying to reclaim their music. It’s about how deals got structured and who actually benefited from them.
The lawyers then break down why the law gives artists a path to fight back years later:
“To remedy this inversion of constitutional benefits, Congress has always ensured that authors receive a second chance to control and benefit from the fruits of their labor. Under the Copyright Act of 1976 (the ‘1976 Act’), that second chance is guaranteed through so-called ‘termination rights,’ which provide authors and their heirs an inalienable right to reclaim any copyright previously transferred or licensed away by the original author.”
That’s the core of Salt-N-Pepa’s case right there.
They’re using termination rights to try to take back control of their recordings, and it’s a legal move that’s been sitting in the law books for decades.
UMG’s defense leans on the idea that the recordings were “works made for hire,” which would keep ownership locked with the label.
But the lawyers backing Salt-N-Pepa argue the lower court totally missed the mark on that issue:
“The district court’s Opinion and Order in favor of UMG purports to side-step the ‘work made for hire’ issue. But to do so, the court ignored a fundamental tenet of copyright law that, absent a legitimate ‘work made for hire’ relationship, the creator is the author and initial owner of a copyrighted work from the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium of expression.”
They’re saying the court skipped over the key legal question and built its whole decision on that gap.
The filing also draws a sharp line between artists and labels when it comes to who actually created the work:
“In context, the most likely authors of a sound recording are the performers and, possibly, the producers who take an active role in shaping the sonic landscape by contributing meaningful creative expression to the recording. Conversely, given the purely logistical and financial role of record companies in the recording process, the label will rarely, if ever, be considered an author of an artist’s sound recording.”
That language directly challenges the whole idea that a label can claim ownership just because it funded or controlled the process.
The lawyers also warn that courts can’t just rely on assumptions or contract language alone:
“Resting on an implicit factual premise is, of itself, reversible error because, ‘there must be findings, stated either in the court’s opinion or separately, which are sufficient to indicate the factual basis for the ultimate conclusion.’”
And they push back even harder on a common industry tactic:
“What the district court in this case missed, is that simply labeling something in a record contract as a ‘work made for hire’ or that it will be owned by the recording company ‘from inception’ does not make it so.”
That line hits at the heart of decades worth of label contracts. Reporting from AllHipHop has pointed out that this lawsuit is part of a larger wave of artists revisiting old deals, especially as catalogs become way more valuable in the streaming era.
Salt-N-Pepa’s case stands out because it directly challenges how labels have used “work made for hire” claims to hold onto ownership.
The irony here is impossible to miss.
The same legal tool now helping Salt-N-Pepa build pressure on UMG could also help the label in another major dispute.
In UMG’s ongoing fight tied to Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” multiple lawyers filed amicus briefs supporting the label, which means while amicus support could weaken UMG’s position in this case, it could strengthen the company in another courtroom at the same time.
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