Tidal faces lawsuit

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.

TIDAL relaunches with star studded bore-fest

Beyonce, Nicki Minaj,  Alicia Keys. Jack White, Usher, Arcade Fire, Jason Aldean, J Cole, Kanye West, Madonna,  Daft Punk and Deadmau5 all joined Roc Nation boss Jay-Z for the re-launch of the "artist-friendly" streaming service TIDAL - with  Calvin Harris and Chris Martin skype-ing in.  The FT cites sources who claim that the artists were given their 3% shareholdings gratis alongside a cash sweetener of up to $3 million, in return for agreeing to front the streaming platform - which at $19.99 a month costs twice what other similar services are charging albeit TYIDAL will feature a number of "exclusives", including first-plays of new albums and other exclusive content.  You can see a truly appalling video here

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