8 hours ago - UPDATE: Tidal just issued a
statement to Complex about the lawsuit and said that they
are up to date on all royalties owed to Yesh Music, LLC.
TIDAL is up to date on all royalties for the rights to the
music stated in Yesh Music, LLC and John Emanuele’s claim
and they are misinformed as to who, if anyone, owes royalty
payments to them. As Yesh Music, LLC admits in their claim,
TIDAL has the rights to the Master Recordings through its
distributor Tunecore and have paid Tunecore in full for such
exploitations. Their dispute appears to be over the
mechanical licenses, which we are also up to date on
payments via Harry Fox Agency our administrator of
mechanical royalties.
The entire catalogue in question streamed
fewer than 13,000 times on TIDAL and its predecessor over
the past year. We have now removed all music associated with
Yesh Music, LLC and John Emanuele from the service. This is
the first we have heard of this dispute and Yesh Music, LLC
should be engaging Harry Fox Agency if they believe they are
owed the royalties claimed. They especially should not be
naming S Carter Enterprises, LLC, which has nothing to do
with Tidal. This claim serves as nothing other than a
perfect example of why America needs Tort reform.
When Jay Z launched Tidal last year, he did
so on the idea that the streaming service would be the first
of its kind to take care of artists with higher royalty
payouts. After the official launch event, Jay even tweeted
that Tidal was going to pay every artist, writer, and
producer featured on the service a 75 percent royalty rate,
which was higher than any other streaming service in the
industry, at least according to Hov. Now, it appears that
Hov and Tidal are in some serious hot water over their
royalty system, as they're reportedly facing a $5 million
class-action lawsuit from Yesh Music, LLC and John Emanuele
from the band, the American Dollar.
The lawsuit, which was uploaded online to
the site Scribd here, claims that Tidal streamed 116 of the
band's copyrighted songs without paying back any royalty
payments in the process. The firm Garbarini Fitzgerald P.C.
reportedly filed the lawsuit in the United States District
Court Southern District of New York over the weekend,
according to the uploaded documents. As of now, neither Jay,
Tidal, or Tidal's parent company, Aspiro, which is also
named in the suit, have responded to the case.
We spoke with the lawyer in the case,
Richard Garbarini, on the phone, and he confirmed that the
suit was filed over the weekend. Over the phone, Garbarini
said that the band received no royalties for their work
until this past Nov., and that the group asked months ago to
have their music removed from Tidal. As of today, the band's
music is currently still available to stream on Tidal. "I
find it fairly amazing an organization that claims it was
going to pay the artists, systematically does not pay the
artists," Garbarini said.
Tidal reportedly used faulty numbers to make
payments to artists and may have undercut the money they
owed to artists by as much as 35 percent, according to the
filed documents. The band claims that they were expecting
monthly reports on royalty payments and usage of every song
on the service, but nothing was ever sent, according to the
lawsuit...
