Dionne Warwick is facing a lawsuit claiming the legendary singer has turned her back on a rights management company that negotiated her deal for the famed sample of her song “Walk on By” in Doja Cat‘s chart-topping hit “Paint the Town Red.”
In a case filed Monday (Dec. 15), a company called Artists Rights Enforcement Corp. says it’s repped Warwick for years “at great effort and expense” on tricky issues, ranging from the recent Doja sample to a 2002 lawsuit against Atlantic Records. But the company says she’s now trying to back out.
“After decades of service, Ms. Warwick is now trying to evade paying Artists Rights hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars,” the company’s lawyers write. “In so doing, she has violated her contracts with Artists Rights.”
Artists Rights says it provided its services to Warwick for years “at no cost to her,” assuming all the risk and upfront costs. In return, it says she agreed in 2002 to pay the company a 50 percent cut of any money recovered through the enforcement efforts — and to do so “in perpetuity.”
Such arrangements are not unheard of in the music industry, which confronts many artists, even legendary stars, with a thicket of complicated rights deals with a slew of different companies. They mirror contingency deals employed by some law firms, which represent plaintiffs for free with the hope of a big payoff in court.
Warwick’s arrangement worked well for both sides for years, according to Artists Rights, resulting in more than $2.5 million in revenue and a “sixtyfold” increase in royalty distributions from her record companies, according to the lawsuit. But in recent years, Warwick has “increasingly expressed her desire to stop paying Artists Rights,” the company says; in September, her lawyers allegedly reached out to “terminate” the agreement entirely.
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“Artists Rights has performed all of its obligations under the contracts,” the company’s lawyers write. “Ms. Warwick has wrongfully and unreasonably repudiated the contracts.”
Among its work for Warwick, Artists Rights says it handled a 2002 lawsuit against Atlantic and others over the royalties to her chart-topping 1974 hit “Then Came You.” When the case finally settled in 2004, and Warwick was “finally was able to receive some of the royalties that she justly deserved,” the settlement deal signed by the star allegedly required that royalties be routed through Artists Rights.
The company says it later handled issues with SoundExchange, as well as a complicated matter involving Sony Music paying her royalties to the state of California to satisfy unpaid taxes, among other disputes. Then in 2023, Artists Rights says it handled the clearance of a sample of Warwick’s “Walk On By” in Doja’s “Paint,” which spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 and 37 overall weeks on the chart: “Ms. Warwick profited enormously from Artists Rights’ work,” the lawsuit reads.
A rep for Warwick did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday. Doja Cat, Atlantic Records and others mentioned in the lawsuit were not named as defendants nor accused of any wrongdoing.
