Dr Luke claims Kesha’s assault allegations cost him $ 46 million

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Dr Luke claims that Kesha’s allegations against him cost him $ 46 million in lost business opportunities, according to recently unsealed court documents.

The projection model, made by a financial expert hired by Dr Luke (real name Lukasz Gottwald) and obtained by Rolling Stone, was part of a mine of documents related to the producer’s upcoming libel case against Kesha. The files were unsealed on Monday, October 25, and a judge must now decide what will be admissible as evidence in the upcoming case; both parties will have the opportunity to argue for and against the inclusion of certain elements at a hearing on Thursday, October 28. (The start date of the defamation lawsuit has still not been announced.)

Lawyers for Gottwald and Kesha did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

The report on Gottwald’s expected financial losses was written by Arthur Erk, accountant and business manager at Citrin Cooperman & Company. It offers rare insight into the real finances of pop music, thanks to a detailed spreadsheet of the annual publishing income Gottwald has received from all of his hits. For example, in 2011, Gottwald made $ 1,038,521 from Kesha’s hit “Tik Tok”, while he regularly raked in hundreds of thousands – and sometimes a million – from his number one lineup with Katy Perry ( “Roar” appears to have earned him the title most princely annual sum, totaling $ 1,255,365.29 in 2014).

In total, according to Erk’s report, Gottwald generated more than $ 77,790,000 in publishing revenue between 2006 and 2015.

Erk then used all of that data to project Gottwald’s losses after Kesha accused him of sexual assault and emotional abuse in 2014. The estimated total, $ 46,253,672, includes a bunch of different projected losses, including an assumed $ 385,000 that Gottwald failed to be able to produce six tracks on three Kesha albums, as well as $ 11,650,000 in potential losses due to stopping work with Perry after his 2013 LP Prism (Erk stated that he had been “informed that Katy Perry had testified in this action that she could not re-engage Gottwald as a producer as a result of the defendant’s accusations”).

It should be noted that Erk’s report is dated May 2019. And while it does include charts that show Gottwald’s decline in opportunities in music between 2015 and 2017, it does not take into account his not so resurgence. subtle. Since 2019 he has worked with artists like Kim Petras, DaBaby, Kid Laroi and, notably, Doja Cat, co-writing his smashes “Kiss Me More” and “Say So”.

In response to Erk’s projections, Kesha hired his own financial expert to refute the claims, Louis Dudney. In his own report, Dudney questioned the $ 46 million tally, suggesting that Erk “counts twice.[ed]”the supposed losses of no longer working with Kesha and Perry, and that Erk did not” sufficiently consider the substantial risks inherent in the music industry “, or that artists” may not wanting to work with Gottwald for reasons unrelated to the alleged defamatory statements.

Dudney also claimed that Erk did not view Gottwald’s success as “disproportionately dependent” on his frequent work with pop super-producer Max Martin. Dudney notes that more than half of Gottwald’s Top 50 songs from 2005 to 2017 were co-written or co-produced with Martin, and that Martin played a role in 70% of Gottwald’s 20 songs.

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