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Sony Music Leisure is suing Rhapsody Worldwide, the mum or dad firm of streaming service Napster, for $9.2 million in licensing charges and unpaid royalties, in addition to a possible $36 million in damages from copyright infringement. In a lawsuit filed final Friday (August 1) in Manhattan federal courtroom and seen by Pitchfork, Sony claims that Napster did not make royalty funds for over a yr, whereas persevering with to stream music from its catalog. Pitchfork has reached out to Sony Music’s representatives for remark.
In March, the Web3 startup Infinite Actuality acquired Rhapsody Worldwide’s mum or dad firm for $207 million. On the time, Rhapsody allegedly owed over $6.5 million to Sony and its subsidiaries. The acquisition triggered a clause within the licensing agreements between Napster and Sony Music Leisure that might have allowed Sony to interrupt these contracts. Sony declined to take action on the situation that Rhapsody agreed to a four-part fee plan, with the primary three installments due within the following two months.
In line with the lawsuit, Rhapsody have since did not make any funds on their excellent steadiness or extra licensing charges because the acquisition, “all whereas Defendants continued to gather subscription charges from their tens of millions of paying customers.” Sony Music claims that in Might, they despatched a letter to Rhapsody informing the corporate they have been in breach of contract, and that in June they terminated their licensing agreements with Napster.
Nonetheless, Napster has continued to make music in Sony’s catalog accessible to stream, in what the go well with describes as willful infringement. Sony Music Leisure is looking for damages of “$150,000 per infringed work,” which primarily based on the 240-song listing that accompanies the courtroom submitting would quantity to $36 million.
In 2022, Sony Music sued Triller underneath related circumstances, claiming the shortform video app owed tens of millions in missed royalty funds. The corporate admitted liability the next yr and was compelled to pay $4.5 million. In line with a latest Billboard report, Napster has been accused of creating late royalty funds by at the least half a dozen different distributors and report labels, and has been sued by SoundExchange over unpaid royalties.
Napster launched in 1999 as a digital peer-to-peer file-sharing platform that quickly grew to become a hotbed of music piracy. The unique website was shut down in 2001 after being sued by the Recording Trade Affiliation of America. Greatest Purchase acquired Napster in 2008, and in 2011 sold the company to Rhapsody Worldwide, which on the time ran a streaming service referred to as Rhapsody.
In 2016, Rhapsody rebranded to Napster. Since then, Rhapsody Worldwide has been purchased and offered a number of extra occasions—first to London-based digital actuality dwell music platform MelodyVR in 2020, then to blockchain agency Algorand in 2022, and at last to Infinite Actuality earlier this yr.
Learn our 2022 function “The Obsessive World of Digital Music Collectors.”
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