Tidal Subscribers Sue Kanye West For Posting On Other Services

Here's an interesting twist in the Kanye West/Tidal story. He's getting sued by Tidal subscribers who claimed they were duped into paying for the service.

It all stems from when the performer released his latest album The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal. At the time, West claimed that the album would never appear on another streaming services, and as a result, some two million people flocked to Tidal to pay at least $9.99 a month to have a listen.

Alas, that exclusivity was to be short lived as TLOP is now available on both Apple Music and Spotify - for free.

That's part of the reason why West has been named in a class action suit against him. Perhaps because that might be a flimsy case to present, the plaintiff's attorneys are leaning more heavily on a privacy issue instead.

"Mr. West's promise of exclusivity also had a grave impact on consumer privacy," the lawsuit states, mostly because user credit card information, music preferences and other personal information were collected.


The lawsuit contends the value of new subscribers and their personal information could be as much as $84 million for Tidal.

The album was reportedly streamed some 250 million times within 10 days of its release.

This will be an interesting one to watch.

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Is Sony's Stake In Spotify Legal?

One of the things that most people don't know about Spotify is that it's partially owned by the three major labels. That was a required part of the licensing deal that Spotify had to acquiesce to  in order for the streaming music service to launch in the United States.

The major labels are obviously hoping for a windfall profit should Spotify ever be purchased by a larger entity (its valuation is north of $10 billion), and the worst part is that most of it would go to the company's bottom lines instead of to the artists that helped make it happen.

But one of the major labels, Sony Music, might be up against a legal foe that could change everything in its equity position with Spotify.

19 Recordings, the record label tied to the American Idol television show), has filed suit against Sony demanding fair-market royalty rates from the label regarding its position with Spotify.

Basically Sony received a block of advertising on Spotify's free tier that it could sell on the side, with the label pocketing the money. 19 Recordings, who's artists include Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, claims it wasn't receiving its rightful cut of that money.

While this might shock some in the business (especially artists), it's just some of the same shenanigans that record labels have been playing almost forever. Whether it's morally right or wrong, labels do their best to make the most money possible and will do whatever it takes to feed the bottom line. The artists are usually left with less than they deserve, but have little power to change things (unless of course you're name is Taylor Swift).

Should 19 Recordings win this lawsuit, however, it will start a chain reaction that could end up forcing the major labels out of the streaming business, and maybe even pay at least a slightly higher royalty to its artists for digital distribution. At least, that's the dream.

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Be Careful Who You Steal Song Ideas From

All songwriters are influenced by those who came before them. It's difficult not to borrow something from a song or artist you love and include it in your work, but when that borrowed piece becomes too blatant, then you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit, even 40 years down the line.

Take the case of Led Zeppelin's iconic "Stairway To Heaven," for instance. In 1967 Zep opened up for the band Spirit, who was out on the road in promotion of their first album (the self-titled Spirit) and playing the song "Taurus" every night. If you listen to both songs, you'll find that there's a lot of similarities in the chord changes and feel, which has caused the family of Spirit guitarist/songwriter Randy California to file a plagiarism suit against Led Zep.

It appears that the first round in the court battle has gone against Led Zep, as a judge has ruled that the trial can take place in the United States District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania. Attorneys for the band had argued that since no one from the band resided in that area, there was no basis for the trial to be held there, but the judge struck the motion to change venues down.

Led Zeppelin has been down this path before, losing a lawsuit to songwriter Willie Dixon for changing his "You Need Love" into "Whole Lotta Love." There's also a case to be made that "Dazed and Confused," "How Many More Times," "The Lemon Song," "Bring It On Home," and a few more were not as original as the world thought when they were first heard on Zep albums.

We still don't know how the lawsuit will turn out, but the moral of the story seems to be that if you're making a lot of money on a song that sounds a lot like another, be prepared to share some of the cash and the credit lest you find yourself in a courtroom somewhere.

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The Court Decision That Could Alter Royalty Payments

Flo & Eddie/The Turtles

A US Federal Court has ruled that SiriusXM violated The Turtles pre-1972 copyright by playing their music without either licensing it or paying performance royalties. The is a big decision that may have far reaching consequences for both classic artists, record labels and digital music services.

Right now digital music services like Pandora and SiriusXM don't pay royalties on any song that existed before 1972 because they argue that the master copyright law didn't exist before then. Broadcasters now only pay royalties to publishers but digital services must also pay the copyright holder when a post-1972 song is played.

The payment to artists and labels is estimated to be at least $60 million before punitive damages. That said, the ruling was made in California and therefore only effects California, so this may prove to be only the first battle in a long war. Several other lawsuits by the major labels and Soundexchange against digital broadcasters are also pending.

While the result may be ominous for the affected digital services, it will have little direct effect on consumers. This may have an eventual effect on broadcast radio though, which has managed to skirt the issue of paying anyone but publishers thanks to strong lobbying on the part of the NAB. With the precedent now set, a new attempt to have radio pay artists when their songs are played might gain some traction in Congress.

The suit was brought by Flo & Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman), the two main players of the 60s hit makers The Turtles.

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Aimee Mann Sues An Invisible Distributor

While a variety of high profile artists like Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich and Pink Floyd are all railing against the perceived royalty injustice at the hands of streaming music services like Spotify, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann has taken a different tact in her new lawsuit against a low profile company called MediaNet. Mann claims that the company has been using more than a hundred of her songs while not paying her any royalties in a suit which could add up to as much $18 million in statutory damages.

Everyone is by now very familiar with Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker and all the other streaming services that seem to be constantly in the news, but not many can say they know anything about MediaNet. (Check out the rest of the article on Forbes).

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The Turtles Sue SiriusXM For $100 Mil

If you're like me and like to occasionally sample some of the songs of the 50s, 60s, and 70s on SiriusXM, you may soon find that option no longer available thanks to a $100 million class-action lawsuit brought about by the 60s band The Turtles.

The Turtles had a number of big hits back then that get regular airplay on the Sirius 60s On 6 channel like "Happy Together," "It Ain't Me Babe," and "She'd Rather Be With Me," but the band feels that SiriusXM has not paid adequate royalties on these and thousands of other songs that date before 1972.

On February 15, 1972 all recordings began being protected by paragraph 114 of the Copyright Act, which provides limitations on exclusive rights and spells out the way that artist's are compensated. Unfortunately the law is somewhat murky on what happens with songs before that point, and The Turtles (Flo & Eddie - Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) feel that Sirius has overstepped their bounds in that regard.

While millions of dollars are a big part of the picture, what might be even bigger is that the suit also seeks an injunction to prohibit any pre-1972 songs to be played on SiriusXM until the suit is settled. That would be a shame, since it sure is fun to hear some of the old songs.

Just for the record, Mark Volman is now an associate professor and director of the entertainment industry studies program at Belmont University, where I have spoken at in the past.

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Warner's Pays Up

One of the primary operating principles of major labels has always been to get away with as much as possible when it comes to underpaying artist royalties. The idea is something like, "Let's not pay this, and if he ever finds out, he'll have to sue us first. Then maybe we can settle for less that we owe." That's the way it's always worked, and that's why record labels in general have received the reputations they now live with.

Another example of this came to light recently when singer Michael McDonald settled with Warner Bros for deliberately underpaying him on itunes downloads for his Doobie Brothers big hits. He's not the only one though. Artists like Kenny Rogers, Peter Frampton, The Cars and Queen's producer Roy Thomas Baker have all received recent settlements as well.

This particular line of suits came about as a result of the Eminem suit a few years ago, where his production company successfully argued that a download constituted a license and not a sale. As a result, the royalty should be 50% of the sale instead of the normal 12 to 20%.

Even though this might seem like a win, it's never really a total victory with record labels, since you never know for sure what the exact sales of your records are. Sure they send you a statement, but chances are the numbers favor the label and not the artist.

Even in todays online world of vastly improved measurement, it doesn't necessarily mean you're seeing the real numbers. No wonder so many artists would rather go the DIY route.

But let's face it, record labels aren't in the business to make money for their artists. The major labels only care about their shareholders, and well they should, since that's their real business. The real fact of the matter is that they care more about the artist's audience than the artist themselves. Every artist should understand this going into a record deal, and expect that they may have to do what Michael McDonald and all the others did if they have some success. It's just the way the business is.

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LMFAO Sues Management For Getting Them Work

A good manager gets his act work, but in California and New York that can mean some pretty negative consequences down the line. When a musical act is first starting out they have no leverage, not hits and no juice, so most promoters and agents won't take a chance (as many of you probably know only too well). In this early career stage, a good manager is the only thing between them and obscurity. The act needs work and the manager does whatever he (or she) has to do, which means booking gigs without the help of an agent.

But the problem is that in California and New York, this is illegal as an agent always must be involved thanks to a law known as the Talent Agencies Act. As a result, many an act has used this law to break their contract with their manager after becoming more successful. For example, here's an excerpt from Chapter 27 of producer Ken Scott's memoir Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust where he describes the same situation he endured as manager of Missing Persons.

"Even though I had a contract with them, they found a way around it in a way that could only happen in California or New York. There’s a very strong law in this state whereby a manager cannot ”procure employment” for an act, only a licensed talent agent can. It’s an arcane law more designed to protect the movie agents of the 1930s than a music artist of today, but it is a law. Well, early on I got them an appearance on Solid Gold, which was one TV show that helped them sell a load of records. Since they got paid scale for it, that meant that I, the manager, had gotten them employment. As a result, they threatened to take me in front of the California labour board, which could have ended up turning out very badly for me. If you go in front of the labour board as a manager and it’s found that you did indeed procure employment, then the labour board can determine that the contract that you have with the band is null and void and never existed, thus any monies you had received because of that contract have to be paid back to the band. That’s what happened with the band Weezer, and both Ke$sha and Lady Gaga are bringing the same action against their former managers right now so they don’t have to pay them commission."

Now the same situation plays out again with a twist. LMFAO's former management company RPMGRP is suing the act for $7 million in commissions it feels it deserves after the act fired the company and poached two of it's employees to act as salaried managers just as the band was hitting it big. LMFAO claims that because RPMGRP got them jobs at various parties and clubs in the early days of the band, their original contract is null and void thanks to the TAA.

This can be a pretty cut-throat business sometimes, but the spirit of this law stinks as it's a no-win situation for any manager. Management is a key commodity in the music business these days, but you'll see fewer and fewer managers taking chances on young acts as long as a silly law like TAA is held over them.

For more excerpts from Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust and other books, go to bobbyowsinski.com.

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Lyric Sites Now A Target For Music Publishers

Several years ago music publishers, looking for new revenue streams, began to pursue lyric websites for violation of copyright for hosting the lyrics to popular songs without permission. One of the biggest wins in the publishers favor recently came at the expense of LiveUniverse.com and its owner Brad Greenspan, who were recently hit with a $6.6 million default judgement for not paying a license fee.

The judge arrived at the amount by charging $12,500 for each of the 528 songs whose lyrics LiveUniverse was accused of infringing from Peermusic, Warner Chappell Music and Bug Music. Some of the songs included "China Girl" by David Bowie, "Old Time Rock n' Roll" by Bob Seger, "Moondance" by Van Morrison and "Georgia On My Mind" performed by Ray Charles.

The irony is that Greenspan could have made a license deal with the publishers for much less than the judgement, but basically chose to try to stick it in everyone's face by not showing for depositions and hearing, not following the court's instructions, and going through a long line of attorneys that slowed the entire process down to a crawl. It wasn't like he didn't have the resources either, having been an original investor in MySpace and cashing out when it was purchased for $580 million by News Corp in 2005.

The fact is that there are a lot of lyric sites out there that offer lyrics legally. Lyric aggregator LyricFind has licensed lyrics.com, lyricsmode.com, lyricsfreak.com, songmeanings.net, lyricsty.com, leoslyrics.com, lyricsbay.com, lyrics.net, lyricsfly.com, musicsonglyrics.com, lyricsoverload.com, and many more.

The fact of the matter is that these sites make big bucks on advertising and they should share a part of the wealth with the originators of the music that made it all possible. If you make money on someone else's creation, you have to share; simple as that.

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Is The RIAA Dying?

For much of the last 10 years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been a symbol of what's wrong with the music business. Traditionally the major record label's lobbying group, it also serves the purpose of declaring gold (500k units), platinum (1 million) and diamond (10 million) awards to the biggest selling records, but when it became the anti-piracy arm of the labels, most musicians and consumers agree it went too far. Suing your customers never bodes well for an industry and that's just what they did, raising a great deal of animosity towards the recording industry and never making a dent in piracy despite the huge amounts of money spent in the courts.

Now it looks like the record label's contraction is finally taking its toll on the RIAA, as their revenue has dropped by 45% over the past two years, from $51.35 million to $29.1 million. Why? There are fewer labels to contribute to their coffers for one thing, but also the fact that the remaining labels are making less money means that they pay less, since that's how the membership dues are determined.

As a result, you'll notice that the association has quietly called a halt to lawsuits against individual file sharers. It's just too expensive, since the reason why the file sharers are doing it in the first place is they don't have any money. Even if they win, they lose since you can't get blood from a stone. Going after Pirate Bay and Megaupload is a lot more efficient, although I think the reason why piracy is falling has to do more with the natural progression of subscription and free streaming models like Spotify and Pandora than anything the RIAA ever did.

What the RIAA is still doing to lobbying politicians to support its legislative agenda, with reports that they've spent as much as $90 million dollars over the last decade (should that have gone to artists instead?). Most recently, the association has been hitting congress and the courts hard trying to make it the ISP's responsibility to either block any file sharer or turn over their names for prosecution. Don't expect that to happen any time soon, thankfully.

The point is, with its cashflow down and threatening to decrease every year from now on, could the days of the RIAA be numbered?

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

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