Katy Perry Penalty Jury May Get Case Today

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 pricey? More than $13,000 for a wardrobe stylist for one night. More than $3,000 for a hairdo and over $800 for a manicure. Nearly $2,000 for flashing cocktail ice cubes.

According to KTLA-TV5, Steve Drellishak, a vice president at Universal Music Group, testified Wednesday that expenses like these are essential to the brand of Perry.

"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," a song by plaintiff Marcus Gray who released it under the stage name "Flame," 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.

An attorney for Capitol Records told jurors Tuesday that expenses trimmed the label's profits to roughly $650,000. Capitol Records is owned by Universal Music Group.

Drellishak said the huge marketing campaign for the album, manufacturing and digital transmission costs, employee salaries and artist royalties are among the expenses that have to be factored in.

They're likely to get the case Thursday after closing arguments that are scheduled for morning.


Drellishak's testimony reflected the massive digital shift the music business has undergone in recent decades, a shift that has also given singles precedence over full albums amid the short attention spans spawned by streaming.

He said "Prism" has sold 1.2 million physical copies, but "Dark Horse" has been streamed 1.89 billion times.

"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 Billboard Hot 100 in early 2014. It earned Perry a Grammy Award nomination and was part of her 2015 Super Bowl halftime performance.