Jared Leto Responds to Record Label Lawsuit

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 10:52 am (PST)

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jared-leto-gay Jared Leto Responds to Record Label Lawsuit

Jard Leto said in a message on his blog today, that his former record label hasn’t paid them, and the record labe still wants more money, three more records, and want the band to abide by a 9 year contract, when California law only allows 7 year recording contracts. Leto makes a lot of valid points, and makes it appear he and his band are victims of a greedy, and unfair, record label. Prince was involved in a similar situation, so he wrote "slave" on his face. Leto said on his blog:

A LETTER FROM THE FRONT: 30 SECONDS TO MARS / EMI (THE LAWSUIT)

To our Friends and Fans,

Despite rumors to the contrary, 30 Seconds to Mars is NOT calling it quits. We are incredibly happy, healthy and very much together here, in Los Angeles, recording our new record. Besides this ridiculously overblown lawsuit (courtesy of Virgin/EMI), we are having one of the most inspiring, wonderful and exciting times that we’ve experienced to date. (More on that later…)

Beyond this distraction, we are so incredibly grateful to all of you around the world that have supported us so passionately. We would never consider stopping this just yet. These past few phenomenal years have been beyond imaginable and we owe every single bit of it to you. Thank you all for that!

So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.

A little history…

We had been signed to our record contract for 9 years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than 7 years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.

Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for ’quitting’. We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void.

We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won’t go into here (we’d rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.

A few things to note…

If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn’t a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even? We think so.

That, and other issues, like the new regime at EMI firing most of the people we know and love, wanting to place advertisements on our website, EMI owning 100 percent of the masters of our record…forever, and basically having a revolving door of regimes at the company made it easy to not want to continue as is.

As the result of this takeover - and the firing of over 2000 employees - we have lost many of the people that were near and dear to us at Virgin/EMI and crucial to the success of 30 Seconds to Mars. A few of the great ones are still there, but it is hardly the same company we have known. After more than 5 regime changes in 9 years you’d think we would be used to the inconsistency, but the team that took the journey together for A Beautiful Lie was a very very special group of people and it’s a huge loss that so many of them are gone. (Quick fact: There is not a single employee at Virgin Records who was working at the company when we signed.)

FYI Virgin/EMI was not required to make this lawsuit public or to list such an egregiously and stupendously large amount of mullah. In fact, they were not required to set any price even close to this. We did not want to take this public, but we felt it best to explain our point of view to you, our
friends and fans, in hope that you can better understand our point of view.

We would always do our best to avoid a fight, but sometimes it’s important to stand up for what you believe in. We hope that by doing what’s right we can help to change things for the better, for ourselves and possibly others.

P.S. We will always remain grateful to the people at Virgin/EMI who were so integral to our success. And we hope that, above all, we can find a resolution to this in as civil and kind a way as possible.

There are certainly more important things out there in the world to spend time and energy on.

To be continued…

Jared Leto
30 Seconds to Mars

My advice, if you don’t like the contract, then don’t sign it. We’ll see how this gets decided in court.

prince-slave Jared Leto Responds to Record Label Lawsuit

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Jared Leto Sued by Virgin Records

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 8:40 am (PST)

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jared-leto-gay Jared Leto Sued by Virgin Records

Jared Leto was sued by Virgin Records, EMI, for $30 million, claiming Leo, and his band 30 Seconds to Mars, refused to deliver three albums as required by its contract.

The band’s last album, "A Beautiful Lie," was released in 2005.

According to the lawsuit, the band "repudiated (refused to acknowledge, accept, or to have anything to do with)" a 1999 contract in July.

It is going to cost Leto a lot more money to pay up in this lawsuit than it would to just make another crappy three albums. It looks like his ego has gotten bigger than his bank account.

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Jared Leto Sits Funny

Posted on February 26, 2008 at 8:44 am (PST)

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jared-leto-gay Jared Leto Sits Funny

Sometimes body language gives away something, like that you might be gay. Case in point, Jared Leto.

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Jared Leto Stays on Top of Most Hated List

Posted on March 12, 2007 at 9:21 am (PST)

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leto_kimmel Jared Leto Stays on Top of Most Hated List

Add Jimmy Kimmel to the list of people who really can’t stand eyeliner-loving Jared Leto. The late-night show host told Stuff magazine he’d rather not welcome Leto back as a guest. When asked if Kimmel ever had to hide his disdain for a guest, he chose the actor/rocker. "He was so insufferably satisfied with himself that I wanted to strangle him," said Kimmel. It’s not hard to see why Stuff voted the comedian, "The Biggest Bad-Ass on TV."

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Tila Tequila Nguyen Gave Jared Leto an STD?

Posted on February 7, 2007 at 7:39 pm (PST)

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tila Tila Tequila Nguyen Gave Jared Leto an STD?

Tila Tequila Nguyen, who Time magazine called "the least lonely girl on the Internet" with 1.5 million friends on the Web site, has jettisoned the Maybelline-penciled "Panic Room" star.

The New York wild child claims that for three years, she had a sexual relationship with "an actor," who sources say is Leto - though he kept it hidden and then went AWOL.

The 25-year-old temptress wrote on her page: "A few months go by and all of a sudden I hear from this ’actor’ person once again. You won’t believe this … but he was actually looking for an ’apology’ from me! Are you f*cking out of your f*ckin mind, asshole? Why do I need to apologize for you being a f*ckin a**hole?"

Just as Patsy Cline sang, Nguyen says Leto is "sweet to me when nobody is around, but when we are around other people, he acts like a different person."

Perhaps that’s because Leto, who was one of Cameron Diaz’s fiancés, had been linked to Lindsay Lohan and Scarlett Johansson during that time. The bisexual Nguyen often hooked up with Leto, sometimes with a friend, in the actor/musician’s rehearsal studio, claims a knowledgeable source. Leto’s spokeswoman Robin Baum told us, "All of this is completely false. … The only truth is that Jared does know who she is."

But something certainly angered the beauty, who’s in Adam Sandler’s next flick, runs a merchandise empire and has a spread in Chaunce Hayden’s Steppin’ Out magazine. To top it off, she releases a vengeance video today for her Lil Jon-produced song, "I Love U," which is said to be about - you guessed it - Leto. Looks like the actor may need a shot of Tequila after all.

Rumor has it that Leto is upset with Tila Tequila because she gave him a really bad sexually transmitted disease. No wonder Leto is always attacking everyone. He’s just got an itch that he’s got to scratch, and it’s making him cranky. If the rumor is true then Tila goes into the Paris Hilton STD category.

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