Publisher suing Tidal settles with Microsoft, sues Google
Publisher Yesh Music, who is suing both Tidal and Google, has settled its lawsuit with Microsoft.
Settled out of court in New York, Digital Music Newshas included a screen shot of a Notice of Dismissal, which notes a prejudice against Microsoft. The case was settled out-of-court for undisclosed terms.
Digital Music News
The lawsuits against Microsoft, Google and Tidal reportedly centre around the fact Yesh’s digital distributor TuneCoreonly licenses the master recording portion of a song, not the mechanical licenses. Yesh maintained that Microsoft failed to obtain a mechanical license before making its artists’ recordings available for temporary stream or permanent download.
As Digital Music News points out, Microsoft’s digitalmusicstreaming service Groove Music (previously XboxMusicand ZuneMusic) comes bundled in with Windows operating systems and Xbox consoles.
Yesh Music is currently making global headlines for its lawsuits against tech leaders. Most recently, Yesh’s court filing against Google’s Google Play Music and YouTube Red was published by news blog MusicTechPolicy.
Yesh is accusing Google of creating its now 38 million track library “by dumping all of the music from independent artists into the GOOGLE Music Service without serving NOIs (notice of intents).”
The court documents were filed in New York on March 1 byYesh Music and drummer and keyboardist John Emanuele, of New York-based band The American Dollar.
The suit maintains Google infringed on the copyright of two of their tracks after being served an NOI on July 22, 2015.
Similarly to Yesh’s case against Microsoft, and its case against Tidal, the pair are seeking class action status and are claiming statutory damages of up to US$150,000 for each infringed track.
As previously reported in TMN, Jay Z’s Tidal music streaming service was last week hit with a copyright infringement and royalties lawsuit by Yesh and Emanuele.
The pair are demanding between US$5 million (A$6.9 million) and $20 million ($28 million) including damages for the copyright infringement of 118 of its tracks on the service.
According to court documents, Tidal was served four NOIs (notice of intents) through (predecessor) WiMP Music on November 14, 2014.
“Each of the NOIs was a license for one year and expired without renewal,” read the court filing. “As a result, Defendants lost their right to serve compulsory licenses for Plaintiff YESH’s Copyrighted Compositions.”
All tracks associated withYesh Music andJohn Emanuelehave since been removed from Tidal.
Tidal’s official statement about the court filing read: “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 aperfect example of why America needs Tort reform.”