Short-form video app Triller has finally been seeing some buzz. It officially filed to go public. And not long after, the video sharing company settled its copyright lawsuit with Sony Music Entertainment, which had claimed Triller was not fulfilling payments.
Triller’s journey to the New York Stock Exchange has been tumultuous at best. In 2020, the company intended to go public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Failure to entice investors led it to explore a reverse merger with video streaming company SeaChange. In June 2022, it backed out of this plan, claiming that its shareholders preferred a direct listing, and filed to go public. It had been largely quiet on this front as Triller apparently waited for SEC approval.
In other areas, however, Triller was facing the noise. In 2022, Sony Music Entertainment sued it after the company allegedly stopped paying licensing fees. Universal Music Group filed a similar lawsuit a few months later. But Triller’s payment issues aren’t limited to music executives and Grammy-winning artists. Its own user base has claimed that the company failed to make good on contracted payments.
In 2022, Black content creators said the company never followed through on its promise to pay 300 people a total of $14 million. Before that lawsuit, other creators sued the platform for refusing to pay them for overseeing a virtual creator house. …