Spotify Hit With $150 Million Class Action Over Unpaid Royalties

Vocal artist rights advocate David Lowery brings a massive action against the largest streaming service.
Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery, retaining the law firm of Michelman & Robinson, LLP, has filed a class action lawsuit seeking at least $150 million in damages against Spotify, alleging it knowingly, willingly, and unlawfully reproduces and distributes copyrighted compositions without obtaining mechanical licenses.

The lawsuit comes amidst ongoing settlement negotiations between Spotify and the National Music Publishers Assn. over the alleged use of allowing users to play music that hasn’t been properly licensed, and also without making mechanical royalty payments to music publishers and songwriters. According to sources, Spotify has created a $17 million to $25 million reserve fund to pay royalties for pending and unmatched song...

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P.S.
I'm thinking to join spotify and wait until they will not pay the royalties (seriously...who could pay for my tracks?). Then the lawyers will do the dirty job.

 

Last edited: Dec 30, 2015

It's absolutely tragic. I can barely afford the electricity bills to run my equipment!!!!!



Meanwhile in Syria:

 

Am I wrong or I see a lot of valuable stuff behind him? I'm sure there is a couple of real Distressor ($1,349 or $1,499)!

 

Yeah, Spotify has been Lowery's growing obsession on his blog/site:

http://thetrichordist.com/

He's someone who'd had a career (and likely made money) in the major music industry, so he focuses on issues which also affect the major music industry. From my perspective, decidedly unlike Lowery's, the problem isn't just Spotify, it's the whole music-industry system, its malingering conventions, and its archaic bureaucratic institutions (Harry Fox Agency, BMI, ASCAP, et al.) - and the aspects which the "new music industry" (iTunes, Bandcamp, TuneCore, Amazon MP3, Google Play, YouTube, et al.) tend to emulate while pretending to be "for" the independent and unsigned musicians.

It's good to see someone such as David Lowery throwing rocks at Goliath Spotify, and maybe it will cause Spotify and other streaming services to clean-up their acts, but an overhaul of the whole system of accounting, reporting, paying and collecting royalties and rights purchases is long overdue. There exists the technology to immediately pay composers and other rights-holders for performance and mechanical royalties as soon as a download is purchased or a song streamed - or to pay those royalties to respecive agencies from which writers and publishers, or other rights-holders, might collect them upon demand - but the archaic conventions and regulations of the "old" music industry remain, while they're adopted in new forms by digital distributors, vending services (iTunes, Amazon, Google, et al.) and sites established to otherwise promote one's music while being nickel-and-dimed for "tiered" service, "social" features that get in the way, and even chunks of one's publishing rights (as with TuneCore and this new site). No one should have to go looking for, nor begging for, their royalties - royalties should just be made available with every sale or stream.

The same technological revolution which made iTunes and The Pirate Bay possible, and which enables every member of this forum to produce and distribute his/her own music as we do, has also caused great changes in every other realm of society - so why have they remained so much the same in the realm of the music biz? It's time for musicians to look into how present-day technology can enable everyone to be paid the same amount per stream, in any situation, and to re-assess the true value of their own work by assessing the real value of some vending service (iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, whatever) which merely rents space on its servers and does no promotion for the artists whatsoever. (Yeah, Apple and Bandcamp have that "curated" thing going on - but whom one must fellate in order to get one's music "curated," or "promoted," or whatnot?)

In short: WHAT CAN YOU STAND FOR OTHERS TO DO WITH YOUR MUSIC FOR THEIR OWN FINANCIAL GAIN?

Addendum: When I upload a file to the digital distributor who sends it to Spotify (and anywhere else), I am responsible for having the legal rights or permissions to do so - which includes my having cleared mechanical royalties and other rights myself. It is not Spofity's place to report and pay mechanical royalties - that is the role of the record label or artist who had uploaded it for streaming or sale. On that basis, Lowery's case should take a wheelchair to court, because it will be shown to have no legs to stand on.

 

Last edited: Dec 30, 2015