It’s not just TIDAL and Spotify who are being sued for alleged under-payment of mechanical royalties in the US – now Google Play is facing a class action lawsuit too.
Google Inc was issued with a complaint from John Emanuele and publisher Yesh Music on Tuesday (March 1) in the Southern District Court of New York.
The plaintiffs claim that Google continued to infringe the copyright of two compositions after being served with notice on July 22, 2015.
Emanuele and Yesh are the same parties who are also suing TIDAL
Like that suit, the Google Play complaint claims that “Defendant failed to serve an NOI, or a timely NOI, for all of Plaintiffs’ and Putative Class’ Copyrighted compositions.”
Once again, the parties are claiming statutory damages awards of between $750 and $30,000 for each infringed Composition, and up to $150,000 for a willful infringement.
The lawsuit adds: “The infringement of Plaintiffs’ and the Putative Class Members’ mechanical rights was, and is, knowing and willful.’
“The infringement of the mechanical rights was, and is, knowing and willful.’
Google Play lawsuit
‘Plaintiffs and the Putative Class hold the rights to many copyrighted musical compositions which Defendant has reproduced and/or distributed without license and without proper payment of royalties or accounting for royalties. ‘
You can read the Google Play lawsuit in full through here.
TIDAL responded to its lawsuit from Emanuele, a member of the band American Dollar, with the following 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 and have paid Tunecore in full for such exploitations.
“Their dispute appears to be over the mechanical licenses, which we are also up to date on payments via Harry Fox Agency our administrator of mechanical royalties.
“The main compositions in question were release by The American Dollar and their entire catalogue streamed fewer than 13,000 times on TIDAL and its predecessor over the past year. We have now removed all music associated with Yesh Music, LLC and John Emanuele from the service.
“This is the first we have heard of this dispute and Yesh Music, LLC should be engaging Harry Fox Agency if they believe they are owed the royalties claimed. They especially should not be naming S Carter Enterprises, LLC, which has nothing to do with Tidal.
“This claim serves as nothing other than a perfect example of why America needs Tort reform.”Music Business Worldwide
