By Sam Tobin<\/p>\n
LONDON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Jimi Hendrix’s classic 1960s albums are the focus of a London lawsuit over performers’ rights asserted on behalf of his British bassist and \u200bdrummer against Sony Music Entertainment, which warns that a win for the claimants could “throw the music \u200cindustry into chaos”.<\/p>\n
Guitarist Noel Redding, who had recently auditioned for the 1960s blues-rock band The Animals, and pioneering drummer Mitch Mitchell \u200cjoined The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966 and created some of the most renowned music of the decade.<\/p>\n
Redding and Mitchell played on the group’s three studio albums “Are You Experienced”, “Axis: Bold As Love” and “Electric Ladyland”, released in 1967 and 1968 and featuring “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze”, “Foxy Lady” and other hits.<\/p>\n
The recordings helped usher in the psychedelic music age \u2060and made Hendrix a rock superstar \u200cbefore his untimely death in London in September 1970, aged 27. Five decades on, The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s music remains both popular and profitable.<\/p>\n
Their albums are at \u200dthe centre of a trial that began on Tuesday and seeks a share of potentially lucrative streaming royalties \u2014 a claim Sony says should be rejected.<\/p>\n
LAWSUIT CITES UNFORESEEN RISE OF STREAMING<\/p>\n
Redding and Mitchell died in 2003 and 2008 respectively and \u200btheir descendants later assigned any rights they might have had to two companies, Noel Redding Estate Limited \u200cand Mitch Mitchell Estate Limited.<\/p>\n
The companies sued Sony at London’s High Court in 2022 and are seeking a declaration that they own a share of the sound recording copyrights of, and performers’ property rights in, the three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums.<\/p>\n
Sony’s lawyers argue that in 1966 the band signed away the rights to exploit the recordings “by any method now known or hereafter to be known”. They also cite releases agreed \u2060by Redding and Mitchell to drop lawsuits in the \u200bearly 1970s.<\/p>\n
But the companies’ lawyer Simon Malynicz said Sony’s case relied \u200bon deals signed “long before the internet revolutionised music” and the rise of streaming platforms like Spotify.<\/p>\n
“The agreements from the 1960s and 1970s simply do not extend to the \u200dradically different modes of digital \u2060exploitation which underpin (Sony’s) current business model,” he said in court filings.<\/p>\n
Sony, however, raised concerns about the wider impact of the companies’ case if they succeed, which it said could prompt a slew \u2060of lawsuits from session musicians and backing vocalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sam Tobin LONDON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Jimi Hendrix’s classic 1960s albums are the focus of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,99393,103591,409,103589,103592,103590,103593],"class_list":{"0":"post-176345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-jimi-hendrix","12":"tag-mitch-mitchell","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-noel-redding","15":"tag-performers39-rights","16":"tag-sony-music-entertainment","17":"tag-studio-albums"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}