Jay Z And TIDAL Finally Respond To Recent $5 Million Lawsuit

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It looks like Jay Z may be facing another financial roadblock on his quest to bring TIDAL to the forefront of music streaming services. TIDAL has cycled through more than a few CEOs in the past couple of months and Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo was pirated over 500,000 times after its exclusive release on TIDAL, raising the question of how well TIDAL can actually protect its artists and their music. To add insult to injury, it was announced last week that TIDAL is facing a $5 million class action lawsuit. Lawyers representing the rap duo, American Dollar, claim that TIDAL licensed over 100 songs without the artists’ permission and deliberately miscalculated the number of streams of AD’s music to avoid paying the correct amount in royalties.

Today, TIDAL responded to the lawsuit and allegations with this statement- “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…The entire catalogue in question streamed fewer than 13,000 times on TIDAL and its predecessor over the past year”. TIDAL has since removed all of the music in question from the streaming service.

There’s no doubt that Jay Z will combat this lawsuit with only the best lawyers money can possibly buy. But this TIDAL supporter sincerely hopes that these allegations are wrong and that Jay is keeping his word when he claimed that TIDAL will support all of its artists by paying them a 75 percent royalty rate on his Instagram last May. American Dollar and associates have yet to respond to the statements released by TIDAL. The music world will have to wait and see whether this lawsuit will be brought to fruition and the impact on TIDAL if the allegations are indeed true. Check back in with us to keep up to date on this issue.