Legendary Latin Singer Ricardo Montaner Files Lawsuit Against Universal Music Group
The new suit concerns masters for five albums
Ricardo Montaner, the Argentine-Venezuelan singer who’s sold more than 10 million albums, is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) over the masters to five LPs he recorded between 1986 and 1992. Montaner claims UMG has no ownership rights.
The details:
The suit spans both the US and Venezuela.
Universal Music Group N.V. and UMG Publishing Venezuela (UMPV) are named defendants.
The albums in question are Ricardo Montaner (1986), Ricardo Montaner 2 (1988), Un Toque de Misterio (1989), En el Último Lugar del Mundo (1991), and Los Hijos del Sol (1992).
According to the suit, Montaner recorded these albums for a Venezuelan label, Love Records.
The suit goes on to state that Montaner recouped the rights to those albums after a 1993 settlement with Love Records.
However, the complaint says that Universal Music Group Venezuela—which was dissolved in 2022—took control of the rights in 2001 through a series of different business deals, and then signed a distribution deal with Montaner.
Montaner’s response is that he never received any royalties from that deal, and he moved to terminate it officially in 2022.
Once the termination took hold in 2024, Montaner licensed the albums to Legacy, which began distributing them through ADA Latin.
Then this past April, UMG sent a letter to ADA Latin, claiming ownership of the five albums and demanding that ADA Latin stop selling them.
👋 Disclosures & Transparency Block
This article was written with information sourced from Music Business Worldwide.
We covered it because UMG is one of the three major labels and Montaner is a prominent artist.
