At the beginning of 2021, the American Tiktok competitor Triller had already turned the world's largest music company, Universal Music, against itself.

Now the company is being sued by the number two in the music industry, Sony Music.

The backgrounds are similar.

In February last year, Universal accused Triller of withholding payments and refusing to negotiate a new license agreement for the use of the Universal catalogue.

In response, Universal pulled the works from the app.

A new license agreement was then signed in May 2021, which in this case covered both music recordings and the publishing side, i.e. the rights to use the texts and compositions.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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Sony is now accusing Triller of not having made the agreed monthly payments from March 2022 for the use of music recordings.

The lawsuit filed on Monday, according to which the Triller app has been downloaded more than 350 million times, is said to be worth "millions of dollars".

In addition, although Sony terminated the license agreement for this reason on August 8, Triller users still have access to works by Sony artists, which the music company regards as intentional copyright infringement.

There was initially no comment from Triller.

Timbaland and Swizz Beatz had already filed suit against Triller in mid-August.

The well-known producers had sold their live streaming platform Verzuz to Triller last year.

According to the lawsuit, Triller has not yet paid them $28 million that they were owed since the sale, as agreed.

Triller said to "Rolling Stone" that they were of the opinion that not all the conditions for further payments had been met and that they were trying to reach an amicable and quick agreement.

Drums for crackdown on Tiktok

In the course of Donald Trump's action against Tiktok's Chinese parent company Bytedance - at times there was even a ban on the short video app in America - Triller came into focus as an alternative.

Potential security concerns continue to be discussed, with Triller actively participating.

In July of this year, Triller boss Mahi de Silva appealed to all US citizens to delete Tiktok and to the government to finally ban the app.

Meanwhile, the company announced on Monday that it had closed a new round of financing.

According to the announcement, Triller has now collected a total of 300 million dollars.

Triller intends to go public in New York in the fourth quarter of this year.

Previously, an IPO had been in the room in the third quarter.