Jury gets a glimpse into costs of making a Katy Perry hit
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's expensive to promote a Katy Perry hit, a music executive told a jury that will decide how much the pop superstar and other collaborators on her 2013 song "Dark Horse" will pay the creators of a Christian rap song.
Just how expensive? More than $13,000 for a wardrobe stylist. Over $3,000 for a hairdo. Nearly $2,000 for flashing cocktail ice cubes.
Steve Drellishak, a vice president at Universal Music Group, testified Wednesday that expenses like these are essential to the brand of Perry, which requires that she always has the most fashionable styles available.
"She always has to be in the most fashionable clothes, the most fashionable makeup," said Drellishak, who is the first witness to testify after a nine-person jury found that Perry and her "Dark Horse" collaborator improperly copied elements of the 2009 song "Joyful Noise."
"She changes her look a lot," Drellishak said. "That's core to what the Katy Perry brand is."
Attorneys for the creators of "Joyful Noise," say Capitol Records received more than $31 million for the "Dark Horse" single and the album and concert DVD on which it appeared. Attorneys for both sides told the jury Tuesday that Perry herself earned $3 million, minus $600,000 in expenses.
That's before factoring in expenses, which an attorney for Capitol Records told jurors Tuesday trimmed the label's profits to roughly $650,000. Capitol Records is owned by Universal Music Group.
Drellishak said employee salaries and artist royalties are among the expenses that have to be factored in.
"Joyful Noise" is a song by Christian rap artist Marcus Gray, who released it under the stage name Flame.
"Dark Horse," a hybrid of pop, trap and hip-hop sounds that was the third single from Perry's 2013 album "Prism," spent four weeks atop the...