Pro Music Rights lawsuits form a compact but aggressive litigation campaign that ran from late 2019 through 2020, in which the Florida-based performance rights organization and its founder Jake P. Noch sued Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Pandora, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, and others for more than a billion dollars in copyright and antitrust claims. Every one of those cases ended the same way: dismissal, voluntary withdrawal, or a private settlement with no reported payment. Spotify countersued and accused Noch of running one of the largest streaming fraud operations it had ever seen.
The Spotify Suit and Spotify’s Fraud Countersuit
The campaign opened in November 2019 in the Middle District of Florida. Pro Music Rights and Sosa Entertainment LLC, a record label also owned by Noch, alleged that Spotify had failed to pay royalties on more than 550 million streams, removed Sosa’s music without notice for anticompetitive reasons, and engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices. They sought over $1 billion.1Law Street Media. Pro Music Rights Sues Spotify for Failed Royalty Payment
Spotify’s May 2020 countersuit told a different story. The platform alleged that Noch had directed a third party to create millions of fake accounts to artificially inflate streaming numbers, calling it “one of the most egregious fraudulent streaming operations from a single rights holder” it had encountered.2Billboard. Spotify Indie Label Streaming Fraud Millions Fake Accounts Countersuit According to Spotify, a 2016 whistleblower surfaced messages showing Noch requesting “millions” of accounts. The fraud team said it saw content jump from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams in days. In one instance, roughly 5,500 “users” streaming a single album all came from a town with a population of 10,000, and about 99% of streams for certain albums came from free, ad-supported accounts. Spotify also accused Noch of “title track parasitism,” renaming songs to match popular hits by other artists so listeners would click them by mistake.
Noch called the allegations “laughable and blatantly false.”3Reprtoir. Spotify Pro Music Rights In January 2021 the parties moved to stay the case for settlement talks. By March 2021 it was over: all claims dropped, no payment from Spotify, and a stated agreement to work together against fraudulent streaming. Noch publicly disputed Spotify’s description of the deal, saying the platform’s statements about it were “categorically false.”4Music Business Worldwide. Spotify Settles With Pro Music Rights Founder Who Sought Over 1bn in Damages
Copyright Suits Against Ten Streaming Services
In December 2019, Pro Music Rights filed ten separate copyright infringement suits in the Southern District of New York against Amazon, Apple, Deezer, Google, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Rhapsody (Napster), 7digital, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Each complaint alleged the company had made “a business decision to use music without compensating songwriters” by streaming Pro Music Rights’ catalog without a license.5RAIN News. Ten Streaming Services Hit With Licensing Lawsuit From Pro Music Rights The Amazon complaint said Pro Music Rights notified the company of its licensing obligation in August 2018 and was refused.6Law Street Media. Pro Music Rights Sues Amazon in Follow-Up Suit Against Spotify
The individual cases were short-lived. The Deezer suit was voluntarily dismissed in March 2020.7CourtListener. Pro Music Rights LLC v. Deezer SA The Pandora suit was voluntarily dismissed that same month, without prejudice.8PACER Monitor. Pro Music Rights LLC v. Pandora Media LLC The timing lines up with a change in strategy: Pro Music Rights was rolling the individual copyright claims into one sweeping antitrust action.
The Antitrust Case Against the Music Industry
On March 9, 2020, Pro Music Rights filed what it described as a suit against “the entire music industry” in the District of Connecticut. Pro Music Rights, LLC v. Apple Inc., et al., No. 3:20-cv-00309, named more than two dozen defendants, including Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Pandora, and industry licensing committees.9U.S. Department of Justice. Pro Music Rights LLC v. Apple Inc. et al. Complaint The complaint alleged a conspiracy among streaming platforms and their negotiating bodies to boycott Pro Music Rights, fix licensing fees at artificially low levels, and maintain a monopsony that shut new PROs out of the market. Pro Music Rights argued buyers used the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees as a pretext to refuse to negotiate with anyone outside that system.10Law Street Media. Streaming Companies Sued for Alleged Conspiracy to Fix Licensing Fees
On December 16, 2020, Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer dismissed all of Pro Music Rights’ claims.11Leagle. Pro Music Rights LLC v. Apple Inc., 2020 WL 7406062 The court found that the allegations “suggested wholly innocent reasons for defendants to decline to do business with PMR,” meaning the streaming companies could simply have concluded, on their own, that the catalog was not worth licensing. The court rejected Pro Music Rights’ “shared monopsony theory” as legally invalid and held the company had not defined a plausible relevant product market, a threshold requirement for a Section 2 Sherman Act claim.12Quinn Emanuel. January 2021 Victory for SoundCloud and Streaming Music The dismissal was not with prejudice, but the court cautioned Pro Music Rights to file an amended complaint only if it had “good faith grounds” to do so.
Several defendants exited before the ruling. Rhapsody (Napster), iHeartMedia, 7Digital, and the Radio Music License Committee each filed notices of dismissal with prejudice during the summer of 2020, indicating private settlements.13Music Business Worldwide. Pro Music Rights Appears to Have Settled With iHeartRadio Rhapsody and Others Terms were not publicly disclosed.
Who Runs Pro Music Rights
Jake P. Noch founded Pro Music Rights in 2018 in Naples, Florida, and serves as its CEO, president, and chief financial officer. He was roughly 21 when Spotify filed its streaming-fraud countersuit in 2020.14Law360. Spotify Calls Exec Behind Music Rights Group a Fraudster He also owns Sosa Entertainment LLC, the label at the center of the Spotify dispute. Noch briefly served as CEO of Net Savings Link, Inc. (NSAV) in February 2020 before departing, and later settled disputes with NSAV involving claims of fraudulent misrepresentations.15Dennard Lascar. Pro Music Rights and CEO Enter Into Settlement Agreements
In July 2022, the Jake P. Noch Family Office LLC acquired control of Nuvus Gro Corp., a public shell company previously known as HempTech Corp. and Building Turbines, Inc. The entity was renamed Music Licensing, Inc., trades on OTC Markets under the ticker SONG, and absorbed Pro Music Rights in exchange for 3.5 billion shares of common stock.16SEC. Music Licensing Inc Form 1-U/A Noch holds a single “Preferred J Class” share that gives him 80% of total voting power.17SEC. Music Licensing Inc Annual Report
Why the Suits Kept Failing
The dismissals and cheap exits track a broader problem: courts, competitors, and licensees have all questioned whether Pro Music Rights actually controls what it says it controls. The company claims to represent over 2.5 million musical works and hold a 7.4% share of the U.S. performance rights market.18Pro Music Rights. About Us In a 2025 submission to the U.S. Copyright Office, BMI argued that a 7.4% share would put Pro Music Rights’ catalog above the combined repertoires of SESAC and GMR, and said there is no reliable public information about which songwriters or works it represents. BMI also alleged that part of the catalog consists of AI-generated music.19BMI. BMI USCO NOI Response Global Music Rights told the Copyright Office that newer entrants like Pro Music Rights have represented to licensees “a much more substantial body of work than they actually have.”20Regulations.gov. ALLTRACK Reply Comments, Docket No. 2025-1
The Copyright Office itself noted that licensees have raised concerns about the “accessibility and transparency” of Pro Music Rights’ catalog data and about unregulated PROs extracting “comparatively disproportionate royalties” for “much smaller or rather ambiguous catalogues.”21U.S. Copyright Office. Letter on Issues Related to Performing Rights Organizations
In December 2025, U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald sent a letter to the FTC requesting an investigation into Pro Music Rights and AllTrack under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The letter alleged that Pro Music Rights solicits businesses to buy licenses while “leveraging the specter of statutory damages,” misrepresents its catalog, and may be engaged in “a pattern of deception, if not outright fraud,” and it cited legal action against Noch as supporting evidence.22Billboard. FTC Investigate PROs AllTrack Pro Music Rights Congressman
Pro Music Rights has rejected all of these criticisms as “false and defamatory” and described them as a coordinated effort by entrenched industry interests to suppress independent competition. As of mid-2025, the company said it was exploring defamation and antitrust litigation against its critics.23Complete Music Update. Pro Music Rights Threatens Litigation Over Congressmans Letter and BMIs Criticisms