Eminem demands money from Apple, says it sold his songs without permission

eminem

Eminem has a problem with Apple, and it has nothing to do with the company railroading Google with respect to the FCC. Eminem claims Apple sold 93 of his songs on the iTunes Store without the proper distribution rights, and so he wants a couple of dollars he feels he is owed. It comes out to around $2.5 million that Apple improperly made off Eminem.

I’m torn here: Eminem used to be really good, but Relapse was largely junk. Similarly, Apple used to the “the little guy,” and now it’s going around capriciously banning iPhone Apps, and possibly misleading the FCC. So it’s hard to really “like” either party here.

What’s going on is that Eminem alleges that Aftermath Records, which put out his albums, had no right to make digital distribution deals with Apple (or anyone for that matter), and that Apple then had no right to turn around and sell his music on iTunes.

Then it devolves into boring law-talk. Bottom line is, Eminem doesn’t like that Apple has made money off his songs since he feels it never had the right to sell the songs in the first place.

All of us here at CrunchGear hope that both parties can come to an agreement, so that we can put this long, national nightmare behind us once and for all.

via 9 to 5 Mac (whose bias is way over the top here, but whatever)