Tidal, the music streaming service owned by Jay-Z and supported by many leading artistes inckluding DeadMau5, Madonna, Beyonce, Daft Punk and Kanye West, is now being sued for not paying artists. Yesh Music Publishing and John Emanuele (of the duo American Dollar) have filed a lawsuit against Tidal seeking $5 million. The lawsuit claims that Tidal licensed at least 118 songs by American Dollar without the group’s permission and hasn’t paid the royalties it owes for streaming the songs. The complaint also says Tidal is “deliberately miscalculating” its per-stream royalty rates and failing to send reports to the American Dollar about streams of their songs. It appears that TIDAL's CFO Chris Hart has been fired or 'terminated': Hart has held the CFO position since 2014, and has worked at Jay Z's company since 2012 Meanwhile, Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reports that TIDAL COO Nils Juell was removed from his position in the past week.
Pandora, the US based digital innovator which has spearheaded the development of online radio services stateside and led the 'interactive radio' side of the expanding streaming music market, has bought a good old fashioned FM radio station in South Dakota. The acquisition of KXMZ-FM in Rapid City gives Pandora a seat at the table of the Radio Music Licensing Committee and seemingly would enable it to reduce the royalties it pays to the American music publishers via the music collecting societies, in particular ASCAP, in an escalating row over the 'favourable' treatment given to the major US terrestrial broadcasters such as Clear Channel.
In parallel news, at the World Creators Summit in Washington, DC, the US Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, confirmed that she's looking to "provide a full public performance right for sound recordings" in the USA in a move which would see terrestrial radio stations pay to use sound recordings - internet and satellite stations already do - which will cheer record labels and recording artistes.
SoundExchange, the US non-profit organisation that collects royalties for the use of sound recordings from satellite radio firms, Internet radio services and cable music channels, said on Monday it has now paid $1 billion in digital royalty payments to recording artists and record labels since its inception. Originally a division of the RIAA, the organization became independent in 2003 and also revealed that it paid out $108.6 million during the first quarter, marking the first time it has surpassed the $100 million mark in a quarter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundExchange
