Pro Music Rights (PMR) has finalized a more than $662 million settlement with a Chinese medical-cannabis company, China Food and Beverage Company, as well as with a similar company (which is owned by the same individual), Net Savings Link (NSAV Holding).
Pro Music Rights Founder and CEO Jake Noch recently reached out to Digital Music News with word of the massive settlements. Worth noting at the outset is that PMR received two judgements, each for over $1 million, from the companies. A 20th Circuit Court in Florida ordered China Food and Beverage to pay $1,269,876.97, to a $1,298,194.72 judgement against Net Savings Link. One James Tilton, who founded China Food and Beverage in 1995 and has led NSAV since 2015, per his LinkedIn profile, signed off on the corresponding agreements.
The remaining portion of the $662 million settlement is attributable to purchase options extended to the brands, according to the legal documents. Both entities have the chance to buy “in whole and not in part” a 20 percent interest in both Pro Music Rights Distribution, LLC (separate from the overarching Pro Music Rights PRO) and Sosa Music, which is a Florida independent music company also owned by Noch. The “membership options” that comprise the one-fifth interests would cost $255 apiece, based upon “a price resulting from a valuation as determined by the manager of Pro Music Rights” and Sosa.
Moreover, in order to exercise the purchase option, China Food (as well as Net Savings Link, for the other 20 percent) and owner James Tilton would have to “provide written notice exclusively by personal delivery, and no other method,” per the text. And after outlining other provisions of the stock option, the document indicates that this “Option shall expire, and no longer be exercisable, on the four (4) month anniversary of the Effective Date.”
As the settlement agreement is dated September 30th, 2020, the purchase window is fast closing. But given Pro Music Rights’ announcing the settlement now – it bears mentioning here that Net Savings Link released a press release in February of this year stating that it had named Jake Noch CEO – one would assume that the deal is already in motion.
Lending to the plausibility of the latter point is the fact that both Net Savings Link and China Food and Beverage stated in releases that they intend “to complete the exercise of the options shortly.” Furthermore, these same announcement messages relayed that the entities had both issued an “unsecured promissory note,” totaling the $662 million settlement amount.
Of course, the substantial size of the settlement automatically raises questions about how the participating companies will front the more than $660 million worth of required funds. The settlement notice shared with DMN doesn’t describe the licensing dispute between Pro Music Rights and the Chinese cannabis companies – though PMR has levied several high-profile lawsuits on the year, including against grocery-store chain Meijer, and settled a complaint against Connoisseur Media in October.
Net Savings Link stock, traded as NSAV on the Pink Open Market, finished the day with a per-share price of $0.0003. The Pennsylvania-based company (China Food and Beverage also lists a U.S. address on its Bloomberg profile) sells hemp-based beer as Tiger Hemp Beer, according to its MarketWatch profile. The beer, which was to be brewed by Louisiana’s Ouachita Brewing, partnered with rapper 5ive Mics at launch in a promotional deal. However, the company wrote in its last tweet, dated July 1st, 2019, that a regulatory hurdle had delayed the lager’s production.
China Food and Beverage, traded as CHIF on the Pink Open (and classified as a “shell” company on the exchange), saw its per-share price jump by nearly 100 percent on the day, to $.0067.
What was the point of this overly technical boast by a company getting money from some other companies no one heard of or cards about? What a very poorly planned article.
Hmmmmmm….I think you got the point……you know, the thing they really carded about……..
This article is so poorly written. I never heard of this PRO, who do they represent? Seems pretty sketchy.
Here’s a list of some of their clients:
https://musicrightswatch.wordpress.com/2019/11/30/a-list-of-artists-in-the-pro-music-rights-catalog/
Never heard of PRO? How is that possible? THEY ADVERTISE ON DMN EVERY DAY!
When “Jake Noch recently reached out to Digital Music News with word of the massive settlements,” you could be sure it went something like: “You better write another glowing article about me, I practically keep this site afloat.”
Note, one of the very first posts DMN wrote about Noch a few years ago was that he’s essentially a fraud. Soon after, PRO banners dotted DMN and they never left.
DMN emailed to advertise on their site and i laughed. this site is a joke. if his Jake 22 year old kid got $662m from a lawsuit I’ll run around america naked for a year
Who do Pro Music Rights represent?
Some artists who I found a track or two on YouTube from are:
$o$a IFGB (the rap alias of Jake P Noch when he was 17)
Brick God Sosa (the rap alias of Jake P Noch when he was 18)
Damu Brazy (the rap alias of Jake P Noch when he was 19)
Jake Noch
There’s a lot of artists who don’t appear to have recorded anything yet, eg:
Abubakr Hill, whose is listed on the PMR website as having 10 songs in their extensive catalog, all written by Jake P Noch. Titles include “Dear And Rhymes”, “Dear And Vibes”, “There Goes My Money” and “There Goes That Money”.
Eesha Keeling who has 20 songs all written by Jake P Noch. These include such titles as “Broken And Moves”, “Running And Miracle”, “Midnight And Riot” and “Mad For That Thunder”, which should not be confused with “Love For That Thunder”, which Jake penned for another recent Pro Music Rights signing, Bethany Liu.
There’s also a lot of artists with surprisingly similar names:
LEGATO_DIMY
LEGATODE45
LEGATODI001
LEGATOGILL2002
LEGATOKAL999
MAJORRASCZ
MAJORTHIRD
MAJORTLIM
MAJORXA41
MAJORYGUNN
It looks like a quick way to say you have a catalog of over 2 million songs. Just use a random name generator for artists and titles. There are no claims that these are actual recordings.
DMN emailed to advertise on their site and i laughed. this site is a joke. if his Jake 22 year old kid got $662m from a lawsuit I’ll run around america naked for a year
Pro rights use AI to create songs that sound like other songs to sue for infringement. that’s their business model
I am confused by this whole article, which said a lot but explained nothing
Now you are saying Pro is using Ai to create a song that sounds similar to another song, and then suing for infringement? They would in fact be the infringers.
I am not doubting you, this whole article is a head spinner, with no real context.
Cheers
I hadn’t heard about this, but Jake Noch was releasing tracks with the titles of current hits, even though the lyrics, which were from well-known commercial sample packs, had no relationship to the titles. It seems I can’t post links here but search for “Jake Noch Taki Taki” as an example. It’s called something like “title mining”. Use a famous song title to try a get streams.
Yet another Pro Music Rights press release on DMN. Jake’s been leaving a trail of press releases about his fantasy music career on the internet since he was 16. They are usually about how much money he’s made. If you believe them you have to excuse the fact that he was actually at an expensive private school in Florida when he claims to have been a Blood gang member in California.
Now it’s press releases about his fantasy business career. There’s no mention in this of WHY Jake sued James Tilton. At the beginning of this year James Tilton, for some obscure reason, appointed Jake as CEO of his very dubious cannabis-related companies. Perhaps he thought Jake was an adult with some genuine business experience and not a 21 year old on the autistic spectrum. Anyway, Jake immediately asked for Tilton and other staff to resign, so Tilton sacked him. Jake then sued him for breach of contract. Tilton doesn’t have any money so what this press release is about is just promisary notes for money Tilton will never be able to raise.
You could paraphrase this whole article with “Huge amount of money that will never see the light of day.”
Wtf is digital music news?