Kieran Hebden, UK electronic producer Four Tet, will sue his former label Domino over breach-of-contract for removing his albums from all streaming platforms. Domino pulled the albums under a previous legal dispute with the artist in 2020 over royalty rates, “Hebden claimed that the contract suggests a “reasonable royalty rate” for streams and downloads would be at least 50 percent. Domino had instead been paying Hebden a rate of 18 percent on streams and downloads. It had only been obligated to pay a chunk of that. The label also reportedly asserted that the rate for streaming and downloads would be the same, contending that “a stream is always technically a download of data packets.”
Hebden tweeted that Domino’s lawyers had “said they would remove [his] music from all digital services in order to stop the case progressing.”
“The judge ruled that Four Tet can go forward with arguments that scrubbing the albums violated commitments to make the albums commercially available. Domino’s lawyer at the hearing contended that the label had no such obligation.”
Four Tet asked for damages of up to £70,000 (about $95,000) plus costs. Hebden also seeks a court judgment over the 50 percent royalty rate.
– Excerpt from an article for Pitchfork by Marc Hogan. Read the full article here.
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