Timbaland and Swizz Beatz are suing Triller after the short-form video platform allegedly failed to make a $28 million payment for the acquisition of their live music face-off series, Verzuz.
The music-producing pair claim Triller hasn’t followed through on any of its required payments since January. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in a Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, Triller allegedly failed to pay Timbaland and Swizz Beatz in January and later agreed to a settlement that would require it to pay $18 million in March and $1 million every month for the next 10 months. But those payments supposedly haven’t come through either.
“To date, Defendants [Triller] have failed and refused to make any payment to Mosley [Timbaland] and Dean [Swizz Beatz] of the past due sums due and owing, and Defendants continue in default of their payment obligations under the Agreement,” the filing states. The lawsuit was first reported by The Washington Post.
Timbaland and Swizz created Verzuz in 2020 as a webcast that pits two artists and their music against each other. Triller acquired the series last year, and as part of the deal, the duo joined Triller’s management team and also became shareholders in its parent company, Triller Network. According to Billboard, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz split up a portion of their equity stake to 46 other artists who appeared on Verzuz, including Alicia Keys, T-Pain, Rick Ross, and John Legend.
In an email to The Verge, Triller claimed that it has paid Timbaland and Swizz Beatz “$50 million in cash and stock” and tried to frame the lawsuit as a personal dispute by the two musicians. The company even went so far as to say Timbaland and Swizz Beatz have “been the greatest beneficiaries of Triller to date.” Triller declined to provide a named spokesperson in emails to The Verge, but an email signature indicated that the message was sent by someone with the first name Ryan.
Earlier this month, a report from The Washington Postrevealed other missing payments from the TikTok rival, with Triller failing to deliver consistent monthly funds promised to Black creators it recruited. This has reportedly left some creators strapped for cash as they attempt to meet Triller’s strict output goals. As noted by The Post, other influencers who signed on for TrillerTV deals in February 2021, including Maverick Baker, still haven’t received payment from the platform.
Triller initially sent this statement from an unnamed spokesperson to The Verge:
This is truly unfortunate and we hope it is nothing more than a misunderstanding driven by lawyers. We do not wish to air our dirty laundry in the press, but we have paid Swizz and Tim millions in cash and in stock. No one has benefited as much from Triller to-date. Triller has helped fuel VERZUZ to new heights – making it the global cultural phenomenon it is today. We hope to resolve this amicably and quickly, and truly hope it’s just a misunderstanding. If we are forced to defend it, we are more than optimistic the truth and facts are on our side.
After pressing Triller to attribute this statement to one of their spokespeople, we received an even longer statement from a different email address entirely:
First and Foremost this is not a feud over Verzuz. It is personal to Swizz and Tim. Swizz and Tim have Personally been the greatest beneficiaries of Triller to date, having been paid over $50 million in cash and stock personally, already.
This is nothing more than a performance dispute on personal payments to Swizz and Tim. On top of the $50 million they were paid, They have annual obligations, which if met, and no breach has occurred, allows them to an annual payment. Only one payment of $10m was in question.
We don’t believe they have met the thresholds for thar payment, including, but not limited to, failure to disclose obligations to labels, and we have been trying to resolve it amicably.It is unfortunate they elected to elevate this to the press and a “legal shakedown” and to further claim we now also owe them payment for one year from now. That has its own set of deliverables which include, but are not limited to, delivery of a set number of Verzuz for 2022. We hope this was just over zealous lawyers jumping the gun.
Either this will settle or a legal venue will weigh the evidence and determine if Swizz and Tim are entitled to what are effectively “earn out performance payments”, if they did or didn’t perform and if they did or didn’t properly disclose. This does not Affect Verzuz operations or Triller’s ownership of Verzuz.Swizz and Tim failed to disclose both trademark and label issues which are far in excess of $50 million dollars.
Our counter-claim will be forthcoming and will be in excess of $50 million in damages for, among other things, false reps and warranties, failure to disclose label payments owed and failure to disclose certain trademark issues, among othersIf this does proceed in court we look forward to putting on our case.
This message was also unsigned but included the name Ryan in an email signature.
The Verge asked if the writer was Triller co-founder Ryan Kavanaugh, at which point Triller stopped responding.
The college student who ran the now-banned @ElonJet Twitter account that used public information to track Elon Musk’s private jet has resumed his activities on Twitter under a new username. As noted by Insider, Jack Sweeney, 20, has created a new account called @ElonJetNextDay — which now tracks Musk’s private jet with a 24-hour delay to circumvent Twitter policy restrictions.
Sweeney’s original ElonJet account was suspended from the platform last week following accusations from Musk that it violated Twitter rules by revealing his live location. Twitter updated its policy to forbid publishing a person’s real-time location on the same day it suspended ElonJet. Sweeney said in an interview with Insider that he will be “posting manually” for now while he works on the framework to fully automate the account.
Musk tweeted on December 15th that “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.” Twitter also explicitly states that “sharing publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm” is not a violation of platform rules. Elsewhere in the policy, it notes that its definition of “live” location data means someone’s real-time or same-day whereabouts.
Most commercial and private aircraft are equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology (ADS-B) that transmits a unique code (tied to the airplane’s tail number) containing information such as altitude and GPS location. This information is publicly available and aircraft flying in the USA and Europe are required to broadcast it in order to prevent midair collisions.
In a statement back in November, Musk said he would not ban the original ElonJet account as part of his “commitment to free speech” despite claiming it was a “direct personal safety risk.” The automated ElonJet account posted publicly available information regarding the location of Musk’s 2015 Gulfstream G650ER, and had amassed over 540,000 followers before it was permanently banned on December 14th. Musk previously offered Sweeney $5,000 to have the account taken down.
Early in November, Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees received a terse email from a generic address: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force.” The note was signed “Twitter.” On Nov. 3, some people at the company received emails indicating they would be laid off the next day.
That night, Ms. Solomon, her husband and a few colleagues headed to Dots Cafe Portland, a lounge on Clinton Street. Phones were on the table, face up, she said. As the work friends talked, they tapped away at their phones, taking part in chats on the Signal app with colleagues in London, Seattle and San Francisco. Messages like “I got hit” were flying across screens, Ms. Solomon recalled. “You were seeing your co-workers drop like flies,” she said.
By the next afternoon her team of about 10 engineers was reduced to four. Ms. Solomon and her husband had survived the round of layoffs. The next week, she recalled, she awaited further direction from Mr. Musk or the new executive team. Nothing came, she said, except for an email alerting employees that remote work would no longer be permitted, with few exceptions.
Many employees learned of Mr. Musk’s priorities by watching his Twitter feed, where he posted frequently about company business to his more than 100 million followers. On Nov. 5, he complained about the platform’s search function: “Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ’98! That will also get a lot better pronto,” he wrote. That same day, he tweeted: “Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots.”
That was more than Ms. Solomon and many of her colleagues had heard internally. “Radio silence,” she said. She began to vent her frustration on Twitter.
One of her first tweets in this vein came on Nov. 6, shortly after Mr. Musk announced a new rule for Twitter users in a tweet: “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark,” he wrote. He had posted that message after many people on Twitter had changed their names to variations on Mr. Musk’s name, most of them mocking.
Apple has removed the option to upgrade to the new HomeKit architecture on devices running iOS 16.2. The change follows multiple reports of issues and problems with the Home app after the upgrade was installed.
Apple spokesperson Emily Ewing confirmed the change in a statement provided to The Verge:
“We are aware of an issue that may impact the ability for users to share the Home within the Home app. A fix will be available soon. In the meantime, we’ve temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. Users who have already upgraded will not be impacted.“
The new Home app architecture was one of the key features of iOS 16.2, with Apple claiming that the upgrade would be “more reliable and efficient.” MacRumors first discovered this week that the Home app in iOS 16.2 no longer offers the option to upgrade to the new architecture within the Home app settings. Several reporters at The Verge have also confirmed that the upgrade option is unavailable on their devices.
The new architecture was first introduced in the iOS 16.2 beta back in October as an optional upgrade before the iOS 16.2 public release on December 13th. Both the beta and public release required Apple devices logged into iCloud to be running the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and tvOS. The upgrade does not happen automatically when iOS 16.2 is installed on a phone, instead requiring a manual process through the Home app.
The update has caused issues with missing devices and adding multiple users for some
Reddit users who downloaded the optional upgrade prior to its removal have reported issues such as the app booting other members from a Home account and being unable to re-add them. Users on the MacRumors forum have reported being unable to invite users to share the Home, HomeKit devices being stuck displaying an “updating” status, and some accessories vanishing from the Home app entirely. Users who have already upgraded are unable to revert to the previous version of the app.
Update, December 23rd, 2022, 2:15PM ET: Added confirmation and statement from Apple spokesperson. Added links to Apple’s updated support pages.
