John Emanuele, who plays in the ambient and electronic music group The American Dollar, has sued three different music streaming services in the past two weeks. Emanuele and his lawyers say that in different ways, Slacker Radio, Jay-Z's company Tidal, and now Google Play, have all ripped him off.

The lawsuits are all proposed class actions, as Emanuele's lawyers believe other artists have been cheated, too.

The complaint (PDF) against Tidal was filed on Saturday. It's received the most press attention, in part because Tidal's marketing is based on the idea that it will pay artists more generously than other streaming services. The lawsuit claims Tidal never served a "notice of intention," which is required to get the needed compulsory music license, and never paid the necessary royalties.

A spokesperson for Tidal said that the company has rights to the master recordings "through its distributor, Tunecore, and have paid Tunecore in full for such exploitations." It also claims it's up to date on payments for mechanical licenses, which it pays through the Harry Fox Agency, another third party that administers the complicated world of music royalties.

"This is the first we have heard of this dispute and Yesh Music, LLC should be engaging Harry Fox Agency if they believe they are owed the royalties claimed," said a Tidal spokesperson. (Yesh Music is Emanuele's company and is a co-plaintiff in the case.)

The Emanuele lawsuit says that Tidal "know[s] full well that Harry Fox and Music Reports do not even try to serve NOIs... or calculate proper mechanical royalty rates unless expressly directed."

Basically, the dispute boils down to Tidal saying they're being responsible and paying third parties to distribute funds to artists; with Emanuele saying, you know perfectly well those third-parties don't work right.

The complaint also says Tidal has played fast and loose with the royalty rates, "deliberately miscalculating the per-stream royalty rates by including millions of streams Defendants do not pay," and that Tidal "systematically undercut" royalty calculations by cutting "illegal deals with equity investor partners."

The complaint (PDF) against Google Play, filed yesterday, claims that the company did serve two NOIs covering four tracks, but that "failed to account for the vast majority of tracks" that Emanuele and his partner offered to Google. The NOIs also provided a license for a year, and Google kept playing them after that year was up, according to the complaint.

Google declined to comment on the Emanuele lawsuit.

The complaint (PDF) against Slacker, filed on February 21, says the company "deliberately obfuscated the direct number of streams" and failed to pay proper royalties to the musicians.

Overall, the world of music licensing remains so complicated that it's difficult to be sure one is doing everything "right." Sometimes, the data about who should be paid for music rights is missing or unclear. Emanuele's trio of lawsuits comes two months after alt-rocker David Lowery sued Spotify, saying they blew it on his royalty calculations as well.

In that case, Spotify responded with a statement saying that they're working with the National Music Publishers Association "to find the best way to correctly pay the royalties." Spotify has created a reserve fund of $17 million to $25 million "to pay royalties for pending and unmatched song use," according to Billboard.