

Fifty artists who recorded Prince covers in honor of His Purpleness' 50th birthday June 7 have been slapped with a lawsuit by the short-tempered star. His lawyers now demand that all copies of the tribute be destroyed. Shockadelica had reached No. 8 on Norway's album charts and received several popular reviews by the Norwegian press.

It's perfectly legal to record and sell cover songs of someone else's material, so long as you pay the compulsory licensing fee of about 10 cents per song. To sell their five-disc set of 81 Prince cover songs, they would have to remit around $8 per unit sold to Prince, under a compulsory mechanical license.

Norway's C+C Records distributed 5,000 of the box sets starting earlier this month, plus digital versions, and claim that no one made any money from the project. As a result, they didn't think they owed Prince anything except maybe a free copy.

C+C Records owner and Prince fan Christer Falck contacted the Purple One's people to try to send one to Prince, and that's when the trouble began, according to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (re-reported in Daily Swarm), one of many publications to post positive reviews of the collection.

For now, all 81 songs can be previewed free on C+C Records' website, and some are also available on MySpace in streamable medley form.

When this giveaway first began, there were 5,000 copies of the compilation in circulation. Thanks to Prince's lawsuit and the publicity it will generate, we expect that number to balloon significantly in the coming weeks.

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Image: Felix the Cat