Reigan Derry refutes Jolyon Petch’s statement over battle for song credits
Jolyon Petch and Reigan Derry have been embroiled in a battle over credits for the track ‘Dreams’ by Jolyon Petch — a song that reportedly features Derry’s uncredited vocals. The dispute has seen Petch release a detailed statement on the matter, and today Derry refuted each point in a detailed Instagram post.
The saga came to the public realm when Derry expressed her displeasure about not being invited to the 2021 ARIA awards, even though she featured on Petch’s track, which was nominated for Best Dance Release.
Derry says she was snubbed from receiving credit for the track and that “the ‘artist’ Jolyon Petch refuses to credit me”.
Derry said that Petch released the song, which features vocals she claims to have sung and recorded in her Perth studio, without her consent or written agreement.
Yesterday, Petch responded with a lengthy statement addressing the allegations, saying that Derry was aware that he and his team have been trying to work out an agreement with Derry. This morning, Derry took to Instagram to address each point.
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In the first point, Derry quotes Petch saying, “Dreams was never released without Reigan’s consent”. She contests this point by saying: “Jolyon never sent any version of the song for my feedback or approval”. She added: “He also didn’t send or propose a feature agreement (what I’m currently fighting for).”
“Also never alerted me it was signing it to a major label. [sic]”
“Signed the song to TMRW without including me in anyway (no share in percentages, no asking my permission and no conversations about a feature).”
Derry addressed a number of points in her post, saying that Jolyon was extremely hard to negotiate with and that “15% PPCA was his final offer. His past cover singers have received 50%.” She also said that because she recorded her own vocals, she owns the vocals and that she sent them to Petch on the premise that they were only used for demonstration.
In Petch’s statement, he touched on another track called ‘Holding On’ that Derry also recorded vocals for.
“We did a single together called Holding On which Reigan co-wrote and was paid for her session and registered as a song writer. She agreed to be uncredited on Holding On,” Petch wrote.
Derry responded by saying that this is correct, but “‘Holding On’ is not ‘Dreams'” and says that she was “never paid for this session”.
Petch said that his team has been trying to work with Derry to reach an agreement, something she refutes.
“At every stage over the past few months we have been trying to work with Reigan and her legal team to come to an agreement, accommodating precisely her recent demands (including ongoing royalties and feature credit) even though a deal was clearly made last year. We thought we’d reached an amicable commercial resolution 2 weeks ago– so that she would be recognised at the ARIAs, across DSPs and YouTube, but we have been waiting for Reigan to sign the agreement,” Petch wrote in his statement.
“To this day, there is no agreement, however I remain hopeful that we can come to an equitable agreement soon,” Derry responded.
“I made a point of wanting my name to be featured 10 weeks before the ARIAs, and they used this back me into a corner with the rest of the deal as leverage (in order to get me to agree to terms much less than all of his features),” she added.
“Had Jolyon not pushed back so hard and for so long, I would not have such an extensive lawyer bill, and I would have gotten to celebrate the ARIA’s, and all our other wins, together with him.”
In his statement, Petch also said that he’s been receiving death threats over the matter.
“The past few weeks I have been the target of Reigan’s “followers” which have now escalated to death threats. I’m sure you can understand why I had to block people as no one should ever receive death threats or abuse online.”
Derry stressed that, under no circumstances, that these threats are acceptable.
“This is of much concern to me, but I have never, and will never, encourage abuse. I take this matter very seriously and encourage anyone reading this to refrain from abusive behaviour.”
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.