Fred Durst – frontman of the nu-metal outfit Limp Bizkit – has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles’ central district on Tuesday against Universal Music Group for breach of contract, alleging that the world's leading music company owes the band up to $200m in unpaid royalties. Durst’s Flawless Records is also included as one of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit accuses UMG of having a system that purposely avoids paying millions in royalties, and demands return of Bizkit’s master recordings.

“UMG had grossly underpaid Plaintiffs with respect to their royalties, had failed to provide accurate royalty statements for all periods in which there were sales of any albums,” the document says, “and apparently had seemed to design a royalty system that systematically prevented artists from being paid their royalties. Plaintiffs demanded immediate payment, provision of documents, and return of the Limp Bizkit Master Recordings.”

The suit filed by Durst and his team claims that, despite having a resurgence “starting around 2017-2018” and that “interest in Limp Bizkit began to increase exponentially, and the band went from having a relatively quiet period during the 2010s to exploding in popularity,” the “Break Stuff” singer “had not received any money for any Limp Bizkit exploitations – ever.”

It also states that the group had gained over 450 million streams in 2024, and is on track to have over 793 million streams by the end of the year. “Despite this tremendous 'come back,' the band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action against UMG, leading one to ask how on earth that could possibly be true,” the 60-page document says.

One section of the complaint states that last July, Durst’s lawyers sent a letter to UMG claiming they had been “grossly underpaid” with respect to their royalties. They also had a phone call with a UMG executive who allegedly told them the absence of payment was a “one-off mistake” due to an error with UMG’s new software.

That same month, a UMG agent responded to the letter, claiming that they had paid approximately $43 million to the band in recoupable “"advances" "over the years", which is why the account only recently began paying the band any royalties.” However, it appears that UMG didn’t provide with any back-up or any of the missing accounting records to support the alleged amount.

According to Durst, UMG “told him over the years that it was not required to provide them [the royalties] since his account was still so far from recoupment.” This led his representatives to start investigating further in case “UMG was wrongfully claiming Plaintiffs’ accounts were unrecouped.”

Durst “was informed by the prior owner of Flip Records” – the Californian record label to which Bizkit’s were signed in the 90s before going with Interscope – “that Flip Records was receiving millions of dollars in recent years on Limp Bizkit assets, and that the amounts that Flip Records was getting from UMG had grown exponentially over the past few years,” which prompted his representatives to look for Durst’s royalty statements from UMG without success.

Further eyebrows were raised when UMG reached out to the plaintiffs multiple times for talks to exploit the band's assets: “UMG reached out to Durst to get his approval related to reissuing Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water on vinyl,” the file lists:

“[…] UMG repeatedly asked Durst to get involved with the 25th anniversary re-release of Limp Bizkit’s album “Significant Other”, which would include new songs, artwork, and other assets,” but the lead vocalist didn’t approve any of it, as it seemed to him as a “money grab” that “would only benefit UMG, as Plaintiffs had not seen a dime in royalties on any Limp Bizkit assets at that point.”

The full lawsuit contains numerous accusations against Universal Music Group, such as fraud, rescission, breach of fiduciary duty, intentional misrepresentation and copyright infringement, among others. They demand a jury trial in the aforementioned matter.

Read the 60-page document here.