Chris Brown Producer Ishmael Montague Sues Sony Music

Chris Brown producer Ishmael Montague has filed a nearly $1.25 million lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment (SME) for allegedly failing to pay due royalties and “stalling” his deal with Xposure Music.

Montague recently submitted his complaint to a New York federal court, accusing SME of fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and more. The way the pro se plaintiff tells the story, under a 2016 agreement with Brown’s namesake company, he (Montague) is entitled to a 1.5% producer royalty on “Party.”

That piece of the recorded revenue stream reflects Montague’s share of a 3% split with fellow “Party” producer A1, per the legal text, which doesn’t appear to mention the effort’s third producer, Hitmaka.

In any event, the described arrangement was presumably satisfactory until this past summer, when the plaintiff’s company agreed to sell “royalty interests in specified masters” to Xposure Music.

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the suit, the transaction included “Party” and encountered some obstacles on the road to closing.

With “a routine payee-change proceeding” in order, Montague instructed SME to begin directing the payments to Xposure. But per the action, Sony Music allegedly “intentionally interfered” with and “stalled the change for six weeks” through “false statements and invented policy.”

Without retreading too much of the back and forth (or the payment-transfer disagreements) here, the defendant allegedly responded to the change request in July by calling on the producer to submit a letter of direction “in addition to the assignment instruments,” citing “rigid company policy.”

From there, Montague’s manager is said to have reiterated in writing that “the same account had been changed before, without objection, through Sony’s own change-request process,” which “was available throughout” the episode.

Then, the major’s representatives allegedly claimed “that Sony could not act because it had ‘not received direction from the artists’ regarding” the relevant royalties. Not long thereafter, a misunderstanding about the payment stream itself ensued – SME purportedly claimed that it was “‘not accounting to the producer already.’”

In other words, a delay took center stage and, needless to say, didn’t sit right with the plaintiff or Xposure.

“[S]ix weeks of negotiation against a policy that did not exist consumed plaintiff’s time and resources, delayed his payment, and stood in the way of the” Xposure deal’s closing, Montague summed up.

Finally, regarding the initially mentioned royalties underpayment claim, the plaintiff is said to have learned of allegedly missing compensation via a “third-party review.”

“The producer royalty agreed for the Party master is 3%, of which 1.5% accrues to plaintiff after the A1 split. Sony has applied 0.75% – half the agreed rate – at the vendor level. The basis is a July 2026 review of plaintiff’s statements and agreements, reported to Sony in writing on August 25, 2026,” according to the suit.

Moreover, SME “has never rendered a full and correct accounting of the rate basis applied on the account,” and an “audit of Sony’s accounting of the account is therefore demanded here,” Montague wrote towards the complaint’s conclusion.