Dixie Chicks Settle Sony Suit
Country pop trio the Dixie Chicks said Monday they have settled their 11-month-old legal dispute with the Sony Music Entertainment label, clearing the way for the release of their next album in August.
No details of the settlement were disclosed, but the Los Angeles Times reported the recording stars signed a new contract giving them a $20 million bonus.
The deal also requires the musicians to reimburse Sony Music for about $15 million in marketing costs before they collect royalties from album sales, the Times said, citing unnamed sources. In exchange, Sony agreed to boost the Dixie Chicks' royalty rate to 20 percent of sales.
Representatives for Sony Music, a unit of Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp., declined to comment on the settlement.
Sony and the Dixie Chicks -- lead vocalist Natalie Maines, fiddler Martie Seidel and her banjo-playing sister Emily Robison -- issued a statement announcing an August 27 debut of the group's new album, "Home."
"Our reconciliation with Sony Music couldn't have come at a better time," the Dixie Chicks said in the statement.
A settlement appeared on the horizon about four weeks ago when the Chicks announced that the album's first single, "Long Time Gone," had been delivered to radio stations nationwide.
The trio was one of several high-profile recording acts in recent years to end up in court with their record labels.
The dispute between Sony and the Dixie Chicks began last July after the group's attorney served notice to the music company that they intended to stop recording for the label.
Sony then sued the Dixie Chicks charging breach of contract, saying the label stood to lose at least $100 million unless the Dixie Chicks made good on five more albums they were obligated to deliver.
The Dixie Chicks fired back a month later with their own suit, charging Sony engaged in "systematic thievery" by underpaying $4 million in royalties owed the trio for their first two multi-platinum releases from Sony's Monument Records imprint.
Those two LPs, "Wide Open Spaces" in 1998 and "Fly" in 1999, sold a combined 19 million copies in the United States and earned the group back-to-back Grammys for country album of the year.