This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Legal Top Stories
Jay-Z disputes claims of unpaid fees over Tidal acquisition
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 27 June 2018
Jay-Z has reportedly hit out at two Swedish companies which advised on his 2015 acquisition of the streaming music business that became Tidal. He says that their claims fees remain unpaid are untrue, and that they didn’t do everything they were meant to do anyway.
Yes, it’s another Tidal legal squabble. I’m thinking of pitching a Tidal Legal Squabble sticker album to Panini. You’d buy that, right? “Collect all six billion stickers” it would say on the cover. Then there’d only be room for 60 stickers inside. Allegedly. There’d be stickers to collect of all of Prince’s heirs, split into Tidal lovers and Tidal haters. Though I reckon that the photo of Kanye typing “never, never, never” into Twitter would be the hardest sticker to find.
Anyway, this legal squabble is between Jay-Z and two Swedish companies – Roschier and SEB – which, according to gossip site The Blast, reckon they are still respectively owed $294,000 and $304,383 for their work on the rapper’s acquisition of WiMP.
As you might remember, when Jay-Z decided that what the world needed was a rapper-controlled artist-friendly streaming firm, rather than just setting one up from scratch, he bought Norwegian digital music start-up WiMP. It had already launched the Tidal brand in English-speaking markets where WiMP was a terrible name to operate under.
Roschier and SEB seemingly offered legal and financial advice on that purchase, subsequently invoicing for their time. They say that Jay-Z’s company paid some of their fees back in 2015, but that the balances of their invoices remain unpaid. To that end they went legal back in May seeking the allegedly unpaid monies.
According to The Blast, Jay-Z has now responded to that legal action stating that the two companies “performed certain services for which they have been paid”. The extra fees they both now claim they are due, the response reportedly reckons, were actually the result of the two firms’ “own culpable conduct in overbilling” the rapper’s business.
And, just in case you’re feeling sorry for the legal and money dudes at Roschier and SEB, Jay-Zs response apparently adds that the two companies did not “perform under the contracts they now seek to enforce”.
With all that in mind, Jay-Z’s company S Carter Enterprises has requested that the judge dismiss his former advisors’ cases entirely. Just imagine that request in sticker form! It’s a winner.
