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Dionne Warwick is suing a firm she has worked with for decades for, she says, “stealing millions of dollars in royalty income.”

Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation specializes in helping artists recover music royalties and licensing, especially for legacy artists like Warwick. The firm, for example, negotiated clearing a sample of “Walk On By,” which Doja Cat used in her Grammy-nominated, hit single “Paint the Town Red” from 2023. But things have soured since then, as reported by Pitchfork.

AREC sued Warwick first, bringing its suit in December 2025, claiming that the firm was owed “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars” for recovering the singer’s royalties. It alleged it had not yet been paid for the profitable clearance for Doja Cat’s track years back. 

Warwick and her lawyers filed a fiery countersuit March 9. AREC is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, her lawyers stated, that only says it helps artists “fight to make your music yours again.” But in actuality, her team says, it was “cloaking itself in professional credibility while concealing its own self-interest.”

“Ms. Warwick seeks to expose AREC’s performative ethics and vindicate her rights and obtain restitution for the damages caused by AREC’s decades-long pilfering of millions of dollars in royalty income she earned as a result of her legendary recordings,” the artist’s lawyer Robert S. Meloni wrote in the court filing, as reported by Billboard.

The legendary singer first started working with AREC in 2001. At the time, she needed help recovering royalties and ended up signing a one-page contract with the firm. According to the countersuit, she signed without legal representation, and the agreement was meant for a specific Warner Bros. record dispute. The contract stated, per Pitchfork, that the firm would be entitled to “an ongoing fifty percent of all sums and assets which are recovered.”

But Warwick’s suit against AREC reveals what happened from her perspective. Between 2002 and 2025, AREC collected a “50% share of anything and everything that flowed as a result of her creative output from 1962 to 2001,” lawyers said. Warwick claims she did not know the extent to which money was being extracted. She then sought help from the Davis Firm, which specializes in the music industry.

The Davis Firm requested a full set of documents from AREC on Warwick, and the countersuit complaint claims that AREC didn’t send back documents that properly reflected the artist’s 23 years working with the artist’s rights firm. This led the Davis Firm to send a letter of termination to AREC with a list of demands, like providing copies of all royalties statements and that AREC no longer take payments from Warwick. Rather than respond, the singer’s lawyers say AREC responded with its December 2025 lawsuit. 

“AREC’s efforts were at best nothing more than administrative in nature, or activities that music lawyers routinely perform for an hourly fee,” Warwick’s lawyers wrote.Ahead, the 85-year-old singer is getting ready to release a single on March 20, titled “Ocean in the Desert,” teasing what she has said will be her final album, DWuets. Artists like Cynthia Erivo and Kehlani will be featured.

The post Dionne Warwick Says She Lost Millions In Royalties. Now She’s Taking The Fight To Court appeared first on Essence.

Author: Kimberly Wilson

Read the original article on Essence.