In the summer of 2025, one of the largest record companies on earth went to war with a shoe store over TikTok videos. Sony Music Entertainment and a long list of its labels — LaFace, Zomba, Ultra, Arista, and its Latin division among them — sued Designer Brands, the parent of DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse, accusing it of building years of social-media marketing on music it never licensed. The case, Sony Music Entertainment v. Designer Brands Inc., No. 2:25-cv-07285, was filed August 6, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California before Judge Brianna Fuller Mircheff. By August 2026 the two sides had reached a settlement in principle — but the story of how they got there is a near-perfect field guide to the single most common, most avoidable, and most expensive mistake an independent creator can make with music.
The core allegation is almost mundane in its familiarity: Sony claims DSW, its Topo Athletic brand, and parent Designer Brands used at least 122 of Sony's sound recordings in promotional videos on TikTok and Instagram without the licenses required to do so. The songs named were not obscure. According to the complaint they included Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" and "Formation," Doja Cat's "Paint the Town Red," Becky G's "Shower," Yo Gotti's "Pose," and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Sony called the conduct "systematic and willful," and pointed to a detail that turns an ordinary licensing dispute into a cautionary tale: many of the clips allegedly labeled the music as "original sound" — the generic tag a social platform slaps on audio a user uploads — even though the tracks were commercially released major-label recordings.
What the lawsuit says
Sony's theory is straightforward. A retailer ran a marketing operation across social media, and that operation repeatedly used famous recordings to make the content pop. Using a sound recording in a video for commercial promotion is exactly the kind of use that requires permission from whoever owns the recording. Sony says it owns these recordings, DSW never got permission, and the scale — 122-plus recordings over an extended period — makes the infringement willful rather than accidental. Because the works were registered, Sony is positioned to pursue statutory damages, which for willful infringement can run up to $150,000 per work. Do that math across 122 recordings and the theoretical exposure climbs into the tens of millions before anyone argues about actual harm.
Before Sony ever filed in California, the dispute had already produced a revealing piece of litigation strategy. In July 2025, DSW, Designer Brands, and Topo Athletic went to court first — filing a preemptive declaratory-judgment suit in the Southern District of Ohio against Sony and several other rightsholders, including Sony Music Publishing, UMG Recordings, Universal Music Publishing, and BMG. The point of a declaratory-judgment action is to ask a court to rule that you are not liable before the other side can sue you on their own terms. Sony's response was blunt: it called the Ohio filing "forum-shopping," an attempt to drag a California-centric music fight into a friendlier courthouse ahead of the suit everyone knew was coming. The Ohio judge, Michael H. Watson, agreed, dismissing DSW's preemptive case as an improper "anticipatory filing." That cleared the way for Sony's own infringement suit to proceed in California — and, ultimately, for the settlement in principle the parties disclosed on August 17, 2026.
None of this was decided on the merits. The case resolved by agreement, not by a ruling that the songs were infringed, and a settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing. These were allegations and defenses. But the contours of the fight are exactly where the lessons live.
The hard part: a song is two copyrights, not one
The mistake at the center of this case is one almost every filmmaker makes at least once, because the law here is genuinely counterintuitive. Every piece of recorded music you hear is actually two separate copyrighted works. There is the musical composition — the underlying melody and lyrics, usually controlled by songwriters and their music publishers. And there is the sound recording, often called the "master" — the specific recorded performance of that composition, usually owned by a record label. They are owned by different people, licensed through different channels, and protected independently.
That means the famous track you want to drop into a video carries two tollbooths, not one. To synchronize a recording to picture you generally need a sync license for the composition (from the publisher) and a master-use license for the recording (from the label). Clearing one does nothing for the other. You can have the songwriter's enthusiastic blessing and still be infringing the label's master — which is precisely the lane Sony was driving in. Sony's labels own masters; the suit was about the recordings, full stop.
The second trap is subtler and even more dangerous in 2026, because it hides behind a feature most of us use every day. The music libraries built into TikTok and Instagram are licensed for personal, organic use — a user posting to their own account. Those in-app licenses do not extend to commercial or brand promotion, and they do not transfer ownership of anything. Tagging a clip "original sound" does not make the audio yours, and it does not convert a major-label master into free inventory. The platform tag describes where the audio was uploaded from; it says nothing about who owns it or whether your use is cleared. A business treating a social platform's sound library as a license to advertise is making an assumption the license text flatly contradicts — and that assumption is what the DSW complaint is built on.
Why it matters beyond a shoe company's TikTok
It is tempting to read this as a story about a big retailer that should have known better and a record label with an army of lawyers. For an independent filmmaker, that framing misses the point entirely. The exact same two-copyright structure, the same "I found it in the app" assumption, and the same willfulness math govern the music in your trailer, your festival sizzle reel, your Instagram teaser, and the needle-drop in your third act. The scale is different. The rules are identical.
A few concrete takeaways, drawn straight from the pressure points in this case:
Clear both copyrights, every time. If a recognizable recording appears in anything you release — the film, the trailer, a thirty-second social promo — you almost certainly need a sync license for the composition and a master-use license for the recording. Getting a yes from the artist or songwriter is not the same as getting a yes from the label. Budget for both, in writing, before you cut the track into anything public.
A platform's sound library is not a license for your project. The music you can freely add to a personal TikTok is not cleared for your film's marketing, your brand's content, or a distributor's delivery package. "Original sound" is a filing label, not a grant of rights. Assume nothing in an app's built-in library is cleared for commercial use unless a license says so in plain language.
Uncleared music can blow up a distribution deal — not just a lawsuit. Before a distributor or streamer accepts your film, they require a music cue sheet and proof that every cue is cleared, and your errors-and-omissions (E&O) insurer requires the same. A single uncleared needle-drop can stall delivery, void coverage, or force a last-minute re-edit that costs far more than licensing the track would have. The cheapest time to clear music is before you fall in love with it in the edit.
Willfulness is the difference between a bill and a catastrophe. Statutory damages for willful infringement reach $150,000 per work. "I didn't know I needed a license" is not much of a defense when the track is a global hit and the use is commercial. Keep a paper trail showing you cleared, or deliberately avoided, every piece of music — it is evidence of good faith, and it is the record a court, an insurer, and a buyer will all ask to see.
Your licenses are part of your chain of title. A film's music clearances are an asset, as real as the footage. When a buyer, a collection account manager, or a distributor evaluates your title, documented, traceable music rights are part of what makes it financeable and sellable. Rights you cannot prove you hold are rights you cannot monetize — and a gap in your music clearances is a gap in the title itself.
The uncomfortable truth underneath the spectacle is the same one that runs through every fight on this feed: the creators who stay protected are not the ones with the best taste in music. They are the ones who cleared it, documented it, and could prove it before anyone asked — so that if a court, an insurer, or a buyer ever has to decide whether the music was yours to use, the answer is already written down.
We'll track this docket as the settlement is finalized, and we'll keep watching the broader wave it belongs to — Sony and other majors have brought parallel suits against large brands and institutions over music in social-media marketing, and more are likely. Follow the filings, parties, and coverage on the case page.
This post is editorial commentary on public court filings and news coverage, not legal advice. The allegations described are unproven, the defendants dispute them, the case resolved by a settlement that is not an admission of wrongdoing, and being named as a defendant is not evidence of liability. Details are drawn from the docket and press reports and may be refined as the case develops.