Last month, Jay Z and Tidal made a $40 million offer for the streaming rights to all of Prince's music.
Now Prince's estate and Prince's music entities, NPG Records Inc. and NPG Music Publishing, have made a counter offer:
You will pay us big bucks and get nothing in return.
As expected, the estate has filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Tidal for illegally streaming all of Prince's albums after his death.
According to the estate, Tidal only had a 90 day exclusive on Prince's last album, HitNRun: Phase 1.
Tidal has argued that they had “both oral and written” contracts for the rest of Prince's catalog. However, the estate says Tidal haven't been able to show any documentation to support that claim despite multiple requests to. They add Tidal continues “to reproduce, distribute and publicly perform” Prince’s music, a copyright infringement.
Now it's all going to a jury, with the estate seeking unspecified damages.
Given how much Tidal was willing to pay for the streaming rights, that's going to be a very big number.