Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell’s Heirs Face Off With Sony Over Music Millions

Mia Reynolds, 12/10/2025The heirs of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell confront Sony Music over digital streaming royalties from Jimi Hendrix's legacy. This legal battle raises questions about co-ownership, copyright law, and the value of contributions from all musicians involved, challenging the old contractual frameworks in a changing musical landscape.

Lately, the pulsing heart of Hendrix’s catalog has drawn more than its share of attention in London’s High Court, where a clash of legacies, money, and the clay-footed march of copyright law is unfolding in earnest. Put simply, the families of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell—those crucial, if often overshadowed, cornerstones of the Experience—are making a stand. Their target? None other than Sony Music Entertainment, gatekeepers of recordings that changed the way the world listened.

You’d expect a courtroom brawl over streaming royalties to feel clinical, but this one’s got the haze of something deeper: justice, memory, the question of what we owe to the folks that made everyone else look like magicians. The Redding and Mitchell estates are chasing what they call their share of the fruits, claiming co-ownership of not just a royalty stream, but a living, breathing fragment of music history. Imagine not just being in the room for “Are You Experienced” or “Axis: Bold as Love,” but knowing that your hands helped build them, and then decades later, watching strangers tally up your worth on a spreadsheet.

Of course, corporate responses have a rhythm all their own—downbeat, clipped, heavy on paperwork. Sony’s approach conjures images of nervy executives rifling through stacks of contracts older than Apollo 11, waving around ink-heavy agreements that, in their view, fenced in every future possibility. One phrase quoted in court lands with particular weight: those old deals aimed to cover “any method now known or hereafter to be known.” It’s a line that conjures both legal thoroughness and, frankly, a kind of cosmic jest. Did anyone in 1966 really picture their handiwork looping in the background of TikTok dance videos? Probably not.

The estates, for their part, are betting that the law didn’t see digital coming—not the way it has swept in, flooding royalties across platforms, letting a riff recorded in a London basement spin out to millions of new listeners overnight, any night. The central argument is almost elegant in its simplicity: just because a contract mentioned “methods hereafter to be known,” that doesn’t mean it covered streaming, the digital equivalent of collecting pennies from heaven every time someone hits play.

On second thought, maybe it’s not so simple. There’s a certain melancholy to how music, which once faded into memory, now lingers almost forever—preserved not just in records but in ether and code. With every stream, every inclusion in a viral meme, questions about who’s actually earning become less abstract, and a lot more tangible.

Sony’s line, unsurprisingly, is to warn of a slippery slope. The label’s lawyers have painted an almost apocalyptic picture: what happens if every background musician, every chorus singer, decides to knock on the door, demanding a sliver of royalties for every digital spin? The industry, they warn, could unravel, its money and order undone by a wave of old contracts and new technology.

And yet, beneath the corporate anxiety lies something heavier—a sense of unfinished business. Music seems to gather meaning the longer it hangs around, picking up new generations, echoing through new devices, only growing in value as individual creators fade from view. Who deserves to share in that ongoing legacy: just the frontman, just the owner of the tape, or everyone whose raw nerve made those songs a reality?

Curiously—and it’s one of the things that keeps legal teams tossing and turning—the answer is anything but black-and-white. Copyright law likes its boxes ticked and lines drawn, but art has always colored outside them. Redding and Mitchell, both gone well before streaming even had a working business model, are nonetheless still present; through their estates, their families lay claim to the ongoing echo of their collaboration, the pulse of a rhythm section so perfectly attuned it became nearly invisible.

This standoff, then, isn’t just dry legal argument. It’s a symptom of how the world keeps changing beneath our feet (or maybe right in our earbuds). In 2025, with streaming revenue now outpacing every physical format by miles, it seems just a bit wild to think anyone can forecast what’s next for legacy catalogs like Hendrix’s, or how they’ll be valued twenty, thirty years on.

Maybe this is one case that’s less about the particulars of the 1960s than about what’s coming next. When the music of a generation refuses to fade, the old math just doesn’t add up anymore. Sometimes, fairness feels as elusive as the perfect guitar tone—impossible to pin down, though everyone pretends to chase it.

Whether the courts will tip towards tradition or tap into this new song remains to be seen. For now, every time "Foxy Lady" jumps out of a playlist, that old question lingers unresolved—who, at the end of the day, ought to benefit from the immortality of a moment already passed? The law might, eventually, settle what’s due in pounds and pence. But the music, as ever, plays on—unconcerned, vivid, and very much alive.

There’s something almost haunting about how the opening lick of “Purple Haze” can still sneak its way into a quiet moment, setting off goosebumps even for listeners born long after the Summer of Love. More than fifty years since The Jimi Hendrix Experience first tangled their sound with the fabric of pop culture, that wild energy still manages to find fresh ears—and, perhaps inevitably, fresh legal headaches.Lately, the pulsing heart of Hendrix’s catalog has drawn more than its share of attention in London’s High Court, where a clash of legacies, money, and the clay-footed march of copyright law is unfolding in earnest. Put simply, the families of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell—those crucial, if often overshadowed, cornerstones of the Experience—are making a stand. Their target? None other than Sony Music Entertainment, gatekeepers of recordings that changed the way the world listened.You’d expect a courtroom brawl over streaming royalties to feel clinical, but this one’s got the haze of something deeper: justice, memory, the question of what we owe to the folks that made everyone else look like magicians. The Redding and Mitchell estates are chasing what they call their share of the fruits, claiming co-ownership of not just a royalty stream, but a living, breathing fragment of music history. Imagine not just being in the room for “Are You Experienced” or “Axis: Bold as Love,” but knowing that your hands helped build them, and then decades later, watching strangers tally up your worth on a spreadsheet.Of course, corporate responses have a rhythm all their own—downbeat, clipped, heavy on paperwork. Sony’s approach conjures images of nervy executives rifling through stacks of contracts older than Apollo 11, waving around ink-heavy agreements that, in their view, fenced in every future possibility. One phrase quoted in court lands with particular weight: those old deals aimed to cover “any method now known or hereafter to be known.” It’s a line that conjures both legal thoroughness and, frankly, a kind of cosmic jest. Did anyone in 1966 really picture their handiwork looping in the background of TikTok dance videos? Probably not.The estates, for their part, are betting that the law didn’t see digital coming—not the way it has swept in, flooding royalties across platforms, letting a riff recorded in a London basement spin out to millions of new listeners overnight, any night. The central argument is almost elegant in its simplicity: just because a contract mentioned “methods hereafter to be known,” that doesn’t mean it covered streaming, the digital equivalent of collecting pennies from heaven every time someone hits play.On second thought, maybe it’s not so simple. There’s a certain melancholy to how music, which once faded into memory, now lingers almost forever—preserved not just in records but in ether and code. With every stream, every inclusion in a viral meme, questions about who’s actually earning become less abstract, and a lot more tangible.Sony’s line, unsurprisingly, is to warn of a slippery slope. The label’s lawyers have painted an almost apocalyptic picture: what happens if every background musician, every chorus singer, decides to knock on the door, demanding a sliver of royalties for every digital spin? The industry, they warn, could unravel, its money and order undone by a wave of old contracts and new technology.And yet, beneath the corporate anxiety lies something heavier—a sense of unfinished business. Music seems to gather meaning the longer it hangs around, picking up new generations, echoing through new devices, only growing in value as individual creators fade from view. Who deserves to share in that ongoing legacy: just the frontman, just the owner of the tape, or everyone whose raw nerve made those songs a reality?Curiously—and it’s one of the things that keeps legal teams tossing and turning—the answer is anything but black-and-white. Copyright law likes its boxes ticked and lines drawn, but art has always colored outside them. Redding and Mitchell, both gone well before streaming even had a working business model, are nonetheless still present; through their estates, their families lay claim to the ongoing echo of their collaboration, the pulse of a rhythm section so perfectly attuned it became nearly invisible.This standoff, then, isn’t just dry legal argument. It’s a symptom of how the world keeps changing beneath our feet (or maybe right in our earbuds). In 2025, with streaming revenue now outpacing every physical format by miles, it seems just a bit wild to think anyone can forecast what’s next for legacy catalogs like Hendrix’s, or how they’ll be valued twenty, thirty years on.Maybe this is one case that’s less about the particulars of the 1960s than about what’s coming next. When the music of a generation refuses to fade, the old math just doesn’t add up anymore. Sometimes, fairness feels as elusive as the perfect guitar tone—impossible to pin down, though everyone pretends to chase it.Whether the courts will tip towards tradition or tap into this new song remains to be seen. For now, every time "Foxy Lady" jumps out of a playlist, that old question lingers unresolved—who, at the end of the day, ought to benefit from the immortality of a moment already passed? The law might, eventually, settle what’s due in pounds and pence. But the music, as ever, plays on—unconcerned, vivid, and very much alive.