Apparently $40 million was not enough for Tidal to retain its exclusive streaming rights to Prince’s extensive catalog of music. In fact, Shawn C. Carter, Jay-Z, along with the entirety of his multi-faceted business Roc Nation is being sued by NPG for illegally streaming the late pop legend’s music.
Thus far, the battle has been an ongoing one, festering for months in a Carver County District Court. But Tuesday, NPG Records Inc. and NPG Music Publishing escalated the dispute by filing federal lawsuit, claiming copyright infringement against Jay-Z’s streaming service Tidal in addition to the entirety of Roc Nation.
The lawsuit does acknowledge that NPG had entered into an agreement with Tidal to stream and sell Prince’s last record before his death. However, the album, “HitNRun: Phase 1,” was meant to give Tidal exclusive rights to the material for only 90 days. The lawsuit continues that Roc Nation, through Tidal, has exploited various Prince albums, despite not having explicit permission to do so.
The lawsuit calls for the issue to be settled by a jury, and that the court order Roc Nation in conjuction with Tidal to stop streaming and selling Prince’s music, other than “HitNRun: Phase 1,” and that the company to be ordered to pay an as-of-yet unspecified amount of damages.
Roc Nation has not released any statement yet regarding the matter.
In July of 2015, Prince started pulling all of his music from every streaming service except Tidal, which is known for paying a higher royalty than other services. A month later, the superstar announced that “HitNRun” would be exclusively released on Tidal Sept. 7.
More than a year and a death later, Universal Music Publishing Group announced it had been named “the exclusive worldwide publishing administrator for Prince’s entire song catalog, released and unreleased, effective immediately.” But in documents filed Friday in Carver County, Tidal said its preexisting contract gave it exclusive streaming distribution rights to Prince’s catalog.
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