The “Cheese Tax” lawsuits expose the cost of viral music

A viral song can reach millions before a brand’s legal department has finished asking who owns it. That is the uncomfortable lesson behind the copyright lawsuits filed by Matt Hobbs, the Georgia-based singer-songwriter behind Puppy Songs, against Kroger and LG Electronics. The “Cheese Tax” dispute is being treated as another quirky internet copyright fight. It is more consequential than that: it shows that meme-driven marketing has become commercially mature while the systems protecting the people who create memes remain stubbornly easy to ignore.

Hobbs filed the two suits in a California federal court on October 19, alleging that Kroger and LG used “Cheese Tax” in TikTok videos without synchronization licenses. The minute-long song, released in February 2023, became viral on TikTok and has reached 4.05 million Spotify streams, according to Digital Music News. Billboard reports that the track appeared in tens of thousands of TikTok user videos, while Hobbs says his Puppy Songs account has more than 800,000 followers.

The distinction at the center of the cases is not obscure. TikTok’s in-app music library allows individual users to soundtrack personal posts, but commercial accounts face a narrower commercial music library unless they obtain licenses directly from the relevant rights holders. Hobbs says “Cheese Tax” was never included in that commercial library. The complaints allege that Kroger used the song in a social media advertisement in March 2023 and that LG used it in a video showing a dog beside an open refrigerator. Both videos were removed in April 2026 after legal demands, but Hobbs says he was not compensated.

The real problem is not that brands noticed the song—it is how they noticed it

Brands are supposed to recognize cultural momentum. That is the point of social media marketing. A song about a dog demanding cheese is precisely the kind of compact, repeatable idea that can turn an ordinary product video into something people want to share. Pretending that companies should avoid viral music altogether would be absurd.

But discovery and permission are not the same thing. The alleged use of “Cheese Tax” looks, in our view, like the familiar corporate habit of treating a platform’s ease of use as proof of commercial clearance. A sound that is available to a person making a joke about their own dog is not automatically available to a supermarket or electronics company selling products. The interface may make those uses look identical. The rights are not.

That gap is especially troubling for independent creators. Hobbs had already completed synchronization deals with BarkBox, Purina, Petco and DoorDash, according to Billboard. That matters because it undercuts the idea that the song’s creator was unreachable or unfamiliar with brand licensing. The issue was not whether a deal was impossible; it was whether the companies chose to make one before using the song.

Taking down the video is not the same as repairing the harm

The companies’ alleged response also exposes a weakness in the current model. Once a rights holder objects, deleting a post can make the visible problem disappear. It does not erase the period in which the content was available, promoted and potentially used to support a commercial campaign.

The Kroger complaint reportedly argues that the video remained publicly available on the company’s commercial TikTok page for more than three years, with each day constituting a separate act of infringement. Digital Music News says Hobbs is seeking actual damages or the statutory maximum of $150,000 per work for alleged willful infringement, including the composition and the recording. Those are allegations and requests for relief, not findings by a court. Still, the numbers illustrate why “we removed it” is an inadequate compliance strategy.

LG faces additional allegations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act concerning copyright management information. The complaint claims the company passed off the video and song as its own when uploading it and later downloaded and reuploaded the clip without Hobbs’ information. Again, the court has not resolved those claims. But the broader point is plain: metadata and attribution are not decorative details when a creator’s livelihood depends on proving where a work came from.

Kroger’s other lawsuit makes this look like a system, not a fluke

The “Cheese Tax” cases would be easier to dismiss as an isolated oversight if Kroger were not already facing another music-rights fight. In August 2026, Sony Music sued the grocery company over alleged unauthorized uses of recordings in social media advertising. The earlier case concerns a much larger alleged pattern, while the Hobbs suits center on one independent creator and one viral track. The scale differs, but the alleged failure is strikingly similar: commercial content using music without the necessary permission.

As Music Business Worldwide reported, Sony’s suit alleges at least 392 unauthorized uses. That case reportedly involves recordings by artists including Harry Styles, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus and SZA. The comparison should not be used to flatten the difference between a major label and a solo songwriter. It should do the opposite. If a corporation can face repeated claims involving a large catalog, an independent artist has even less room to absorb a campaign’s unpaid exposure.

Meme culture needs a licensing culture to match

The industry’s old licensing instincts were built around commercials, television, film and recognizable campaign buys. Viral social posts feel smaller, faster and more disposable. That is exactly why they are dangerous. A post can be made in minutes, remain online for years and be seen by an audience far larger than the original campaign brief anticipated.

Brands should treat trending sounds as leads, not free inventory. Platforms should make commercial restrictions harder to misunderstand. And creators need clearer routes to enforce rights without waiting for a company to decide that a lawsuit is cheaper than a license.

Our verdict is firmly with the creator on the principle, while the legal outcome remains unsettled. The “Cheese Tax” lawsuits are not funny because the song is whimsical; they are serious because the commercial value of internet culture is now obvious. Until brand workflows catch up, the people who make viral music will keep supplying the attention—and then fighting to prove they were entitled to be paid for it.