Legendary Los Angeles rock band Los Lobos is suing over allegedly unpaid royalties tied to soundtrack recordings for the 1987 Richie Valens biopic La Bamba and the 1995 Richard Rodriguez-directed film Desperado.
In two lawsuits quietly filed late last year and obtained by Rolling Stone, one of which surfaced Friday after being moved to federal court, the Grammy-winning Chicano band accuses Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment of breaching their contracts and failing to properly account for worldwide royalties. Los Lobos is seeking damages and a new global accounting, alleging that the unpaid amounts total at least $1.5 million and could reach as much as $2.75 million, or more.
In the first lawsuit, the band says the La Bamba soundtrack album reached double platinum status, with its rendition of “La Bamba” topping charts in at least 15 countries. Despite the album’s commercial success, Los Lobos contends it has never been paid streaming royalties for the recordings outside the United States and Canada. The band says it discovered the “massive deficiency” in the royalty statements last March. According to the filing, unpaid royalties tied to the soundtrack range from $1 million to $2 million, with Sony Pictures Entertainment responsible for the payments.
The second lawsuit, which moved to federal court Friday, alleges that in 1993, Los Lobos agreed to provide several soundtrack songs for Desperado and recorded the song “Canción del Mariachi” with the movie’s lead actor, Antonio Banderas. Los Lobos member Cesar Rosas “wrote the composition in its entirety,” the lawsuit states.
In 2004, the independent record company Milan Entertainment released a compilation album entitled Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico and Mariachis that included the song with liner notes that said it was included “courtesy of Columbia Pictures,” the lawsuit says. In 2018, Milan allegedly released the song again on Spotify and YouTube with the shortened title “Mexico and Mariachis.” That release purportedly garnered 150 million streams on Spotify and another 150 million streams on YouTube, the lawsuit claims.
According to the complaint, interest in the song has skyrocketed in recent years after popular UFC fighter Ilia “El Matador” Topuria adopted it as his “walkout” song and “anthem.” Topuria’s popularity purportedly caused the song to be used in TV programming in many countries, the lawsuit claims.
Still, “despite all of these millions of streams of the recording worldwide, the various uses by Topuria, and his endorsement and involvement, there has never been a single royalty statement rendered by Sony to Los Lobos that reports any streaming of the recording, as used in the 2018 Milan Streaming Release, or any licensing activity,” the band alleges. It calls the lack of accounting “egregious.”
In 2019, Sony Music Masterworks purchased Milan. Both companies were “well aware of the value of Topuria’s endorsement” of the song because they allegedly changed the title of the recording on Spotify to “Canción del Mariachi (Ilia Topuria ‘El Matador’ Anthem),” the lawsuit claims.
Los Lobos says worldwide streams of the song have topped 600 million, and based on the band’s contract, its revenue share of those streams would be $500,000 to $750,000. It’s asking the court for a chance to determine the precise amount through discovery and, if necessary, a trial. The band also wants a 24 percent cut of net revenues collected from any licensing deals related to the song.
Lawyers on both sides did not respond to a request for comment. Los Lobos, which was formed in East Los Angeles in 1973, has been nominated for 12 Grammy Awards and won four.
