Warner Music Responds to Lily Allen Sexual Assault Allegation — ‘He Wasn’t and Isn’t Our Employee’

Warner Music has responded to sexual assault allegations made by Lily Allen in an internal memo.

Allen’s appearance on the BBC’s The Next Episode podcast described how the label failed to act. She says after the assault occurred, she met with CEO Max Lousada who said he had no idea the assault had occurred. 

When asked if the executive did anything about it, the singer laughed and replied no. 

Now a leaked internal memo reveals Warner Music believes the accused was not an employee.

The memo states that Warner takes all allegations seriously, but that the accused wasn’t a WMG employee. You can read the full memo below.

We wanted to talk to you about today’s BBC podcast with Lily Allen. Her account of an assault that took place in 2016 is deeply disturbing and obviously an appalling thing to have happened. Behavior like that has no place in our industry.

I want everyone to know that we take allegations of sexual misconduct extremely seriously, and in situations where they’ve been made about Warner employees, we’ve quickly investigated and taken action.

The BBC piece does not say that the person involved is our employee and we understand that he wasn’t and isn’t.

While there’s a robust process in place when it comes to our employees, we need to improve how we handle situations involving an artist and a person who’s not an employee. We’re going to listen and learn from this experience, and take concrete steps so we do better in future.

Please, if you ever hear of anything like this, you must raise it through official channels, such as your manager or HR. You can also call the Compliance hotline anonymously or refer to our Code of Conduct.

Best,

Max

Allen was signed to Warner’s Parlophone label, but she was recently dropped.

The reported reason at the time is because her latest record ⁠⁠— No Shame ⁠— was a commercial flop despite its strong reviews. Inside WMG, the rationale seems to be that the pop scene has changed and her singles no longer chart. Allen argues the album flopped because it received no promotion after her assault allegations.