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Prodigy Files Lawsuit Against Universal Music Group!?!
Mobb Deep member Prodigy Files Lawsuit Against Universal Music Group for taking profits from his solo work that he did not agree to pay them.
The lawsuit against Universal Music Publishing Group alleging that the company has been collecting licensing and royalty fees for his solo work on third party albums for nearly two decades without his permission.
CelebNMusic247.com has this report via AHH:
When Prodigy and Havoc inked their deal with Universal back in 1995, their agreement stated that the label would be paid half of all profits from future albums and songs. Havoc claims that the deal said nothing about the label taking profits from his solo work.
The hip-hop vet said that the label continued to collect 50 percent of all royalties from his solo work and songs he wrote for other artists. Now he is taking UMG to court to get those monies back. Prodigy is suing the label for $57, 489, which is all he has lost, as well as attorney fees.
Meanwhile Billboard reports that lawsuit, brought in federal district court in New York, is seeking, at minimum, thousands of dollars in compensation and damages for copyright infringement, unjust enrichment, conversion, declaratory judgment and relief. But as always with publishing deals, things get confusing very quickly, so let’s break this suit down.
The immediate issue, stated in the complaint and confirmed by Prodigy’s lawyer Corey Boddie, contends that Prodigy’s attorneys contacted UMPG in Oct. 2014 about the discrepancy, after which the company stopped releasing any money to the MC for either his solo work or his Mobb Deep catalog. That year-long cease in payments is where the headline-grabbing number of $57,489.61 — reported by TMZ and other news outlets yesterday — came from, but that’s only one part of the complaint.
“We are suing for a minimum of $57,000,” Boddie tells Billboard, adding that they are seeking accounting records from UMPG before determining a final amount for damages. “But it is much, much more and could possibly be in the millions.”
UMPG declined to comment when contacted for this story.
Though Prodigy is perplexed at how the lawsuit was made public in the first place, he thinks the issue can serve as a teaching tool for younger artists who don’t have his two decades of experience in the music business. “My advice to other artists is definitely to always run a check and run audits on different companies,” he told Billboard in a phone conversation yesterday. “It’s good for up and coming artists to see shit like this, and I guess now that it got out it’s good for them to know what’s going on and that this is a part of the business.”
