Judge Dismisses Tame Impala’s Royalties Lawsuit

(photo credit: Marv Watson)

As Tame Impala tours the U.S. in support of Currents, the bands lawsuit, which stated that there were unpaid royalties from Tame’s old label, Modular Records, has been resolved.

A New York Southern District judge has dismissed the royalty charges made by music rights company BMG. Multi-instrumentalist and Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker spoke lightly on the subject to fans during a Reddit AMA in April, when asked about free music. ‘Up until recently, from all of tame impala’s record sales outside of australia I had received…. zero dollars,’ he said. ‘Someone high up spent the money before it got to me. I may never get that money.’

In June, BMG sued Modular Records accusing them of withholding the royalties to Parker, approximately $450,000, for the albumsInnerspeaker and Lonerism.

Parker told SPIN magazine:

To be honest, I haven’t had a big part in all of this. It’s been mostly lawyers, label execs — I’ve been way on the outside. I still don’t really even understand fully the details. My manager told me that some s—t was going down, that we haven’t been paid for these royalties, blah blah blah, and I was like, ‘Oh, that sucks.’

Modular Recordings founder Steve Pavlovic commented on the situation in a statement. “I’m deeply sorry for any upset cause to Tame Impala,” he said. “I also regret the heavy handed press coverage of this aspect of Modular’s affairs which was completely inaccurate and out of hand. I hope that with Universal and Modular’s respective obligations to BMG on behalf of Tame Impala now resolved that a line can finally be drawn under this unfortunate chapter.”