(EXCLUSIVE) Jay Z & TIDAL Hit With $5 Million Lawsuit

Jay Z

theJasmineBRAND.com exclusively reports, Jay Z is accused of ripping off musician’s by screwing them out of royalties stemming from TIDAL and now the company has been hit with a $5 million + class action lawsuit by an artist who says the music mogul is illegally profiting off his and other artists work.

Yesh Music LLC and musician John Emanuele filed a federal lawsuit against Jay Z’s company, S. Carter Enterprises, along 2 other companies behind TIDAL — accusing them of copyright infringement and underpayment of royalties. The company is the owner of 118 copyrighted musical recordings – from a band named The American Dollar – and Emanuele is a member of the group. They explain the songs are currently available to be streamed on TIDAL. However, the company says TIDAL never obtained permission from the band or paid a dime in royalties.

The plaintiffs add, “Ironically, when Defendant Carter purchased the Tidal Music Service in 2015, it claimed it would be the first streaming service to pay the artists. Different owner, same game” — referring to the prior ownership of Tidal before Jay Z purchased the company for a reported 56 million last year.

The complaint states that Jay Z and the owners of TIDAL aren’t naïve in royalty payments and describes them as “experts” in the process of paying musicians their money.

Jay Z

TIDAL has over 25 million tracks in their music library by dumping all the music of independent artists into their library without licensing or receiving authorization from the artists.

The company also accuses TIDAL of willfully underpaying royalties to some artists by miscalculating the per-stream royalty rates and screwing them out of a large percentage of the money made.

Further, they say TIDAL failed to provide monthly accounting reports to artists for royalties.

Yesh Music LLC and John Emanuele filed suit for up to 150k in damages per infringement along with an injunction from TIDAL from continuing to distribute their music illegally. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of the plaintiffs and any other artists who were screwed out of money from Jay-Z’s company. The complaint is seeking in excess of 5 million dollars.

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