Meta Pushes Back on $110M Eminem Music Lawsuit Filed by His Publishers

The company has asked a federal judge to throw out a copyright lawsuit filed in May by Eight Mile Style, the publishing company that owns Eminem’s early catalogue. The case alleges that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp offered Eminem tracks like “Lose Yourself” without a proper license — but Meta says the complaint is “long on rhetoric” and “short on specifics”.

It is worth stressing that Eminem himself is not behind this lawsuit. The case was brought by the Bass brothers, who control Eight Mile Style. They’ve long had the publishing rights to much of Em’s early work and are known for being aggressive with litigation, though they rarely see their claims succeed in court.

Eight Mile’s complaint seeks maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of 243 compositions across three platforms, a total of $109.4 million. But Meta argues the numbers are inflated and unsubstantiated. In its Thursday (Sept. 18) motion to dismiss, Meta said Eight Mile “never identifies a single example of an allegedly infringing post or story” and pointed to a 2020 licensing agreement with digital rights agency Audiam that, it claims, covered Eminem’s catalogue.

“Fanciful estimates are not a substitute for well-pleaded facts”, Billboard quotes Meta’s attorneys from Mayer Brown, adding that Eight Mile’s lawsuit “simply gets the facts wrong”.

This is not Eight Mile Style’s first courtroom battle. The publisher previously spent years suing Spotify over alleged licensing failures, but that case was dismissed last year in a sharply critical ruling, now under appeal.

As for this Meta case, the judge will now decide whether Eight Mile Style’s claims hold enough weight to proceed.