Sony Music Entertainment wants $9.2 million from Rhapsody International, plus maybe $36 million more, because Napster streamed Sony’s songs without paying royalties for more than a year.
Back in March, Infinite Reality (that Web3 company) bought Rhapsody International’s parent for $207 million, but at that moment, Rhapsody already owed Sony and its family more than $6.5 million. There was a rule in the contract that would’ve let Sony walk away after the acquisition, but Sony decided to stay—only if Rhapsody paid up in four chunks, with most of the money due pretty quickly.
But Rhapsody, as the lawsuit says, didn’t pay a single dollar after the deal went through, even though “all while Defendants continued to collect subscription fees from their millions of paying users.” Sony sent a warning letter in May, then officially canceled all its Napster deals in June, but Napster kept streaming Sony’s music anyway.
Fans sometimes wonder why these companies keep fighting about money when all we want is to listen to our favorite songs.
Sony says Napster’s still letting people stream its catalog, and calls this “willful infringement.” The lawsuit says Sony should get “$150,000 per infringed work,” and with 240 songs on the list, that’s $36 million if you do the math.
This isn’t even the first time Sony’s done this; back in 2022, Sony sued Triller for not paying royalties, and Triller had to pay $4.5 million after admitting it was their fault. According to Billboard, Napster’s also gotten in trouble with at least six other music companies for being late with payments, and SoundExchange also sued them for not handing over royalties.
Napster’s story is wild: it started in 1999 as a way for people to share music files, but it got shut down in 2001 after the Recording Industry Association of America sued. Best Buy bought Napster in 2008, then sold it to Rhapsody International in 2011 (they had their own streaming thing called Rhapsody back then).
Later, in 2016, Rhapsody switched its name to Napster. After that, the company kept getting new owners: MelodyVR (a VR music platform) grabbed it in 2020, then Algorand (a blockchain company) in 2022, and finally Infinite Reality earlier this year.
