Photo Credit: Rachit TankAdRev reportedly ousts co-founder/president Noah Becker following $23 million YouTube royalties scam.
Noah Becker, co-founder and president of rights management company AdRev, has stepped down from the company following perhaps the most significant YouTube music royalties scam in history. It is currently unknown whether Becker’s departure from AdRev is related to the fraud.
Initially reported by Billboard, the company MediaMuv allegedly committed fraud in collecting $23 million in royalties for music to which it did not own rights. AdRev acted as MediaMuv’s rights manager and collected many royalties from YouTube before transferring them to the company. According to court documents, the alleged fraud occurred from 2017 to 2021. It involved 50,000 Latin music copyrights, including songs credited to Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Anuel AA, and Prince Royce, and smaller regional Mexican artists and songwriters.
Industry professionals report that companies like AdRev are typically paid a percentage of the money they collect, usually between 10% and 25%. AdRev would potentially have made more than $2.3 million for its work for MediaMuv. Moreover, emails obtained by Billboard show that Becker was alerted to MediaMuv’s inaccurate royalties claims on multiple occasions but that he shrugs off or rebukes such claims in several of his replies.
“Given the volume of repertoire they (MediaMuv) deal with vs. issues, we feel pretty comfortable,” Becker replies…
