Michigan's "Let's Go Blue" Dispute Settles, Terms Undisclosed
A court filing made on Monday, 2 November, says the sides in a dispute over the University of Michigan marching band song "Let's Go Blue" have reached a settlement that resolves "all issues." The financial terms have not been disclosed.
The song was written by Albert Ahronheim and Joe Carl. In 1978 they signed a publishing deal with Theodore Presser and Carl Fischer. A music publisher handles the business side of a song, including licensing it for films, adverts and video games.
In 2024, Presser and Fischer licensed "Let's Go Blue" to Electronic Arts (EA) for its College Football video game. The fee was $1,000, known in the industry as a synch fee, the payment for placing music alongside pictures in a film, show or game.
The disagreement was over who controlled the song. Presser and Fischer said they had kept the right to administer it continuously since the 1978 deal. Ahronheim and Carl said the composition rights had reverted to them years ago.
The key point was copyright termination, a process that lets songwriters take back rights they have granted to a publisher after a set number of years. Ahronheim and Carl said they exercised that right in 2013. The publishers argued that a required technical step was skipped, so the rights never came back.
The fight moved to court from both directions. Presser and Fischer filed a contract interference lawsuit against Ahronheim and Carl, a claim that someone has disrupted an agreement between two other parties. Ahronheim and Carl responded with a countersuit for copyright infringement, which alleges that a work has been used without permission.
Ahronheim and Carl asked EA to remove the song from College Football, and the company complied. EA was not part of the litigation and was not accused of wrongdoing.
Brian Caplan, the attorney for the publishers, said his clients were happy to resolve their differences with Ahronheim and Carl. He said they looked forward to a mutually beneficial working relationship.
For anyone who has heard the song at a Michigan game, the story is a reminder of how much paperwork sits behind a few bars of brass. Songs written decades ago can change hands through contracts that few fans ever read, and the people who wrote them often have to fight for those rights in court. Billboard first reported the filing and the settlement.
