Spotify sued – music publisher stands up for the artists

Music streaming service Spotify is booming - but artists and publishers are getting little from its success. The lawsuit by Wixen Music against Spotify has been filed.

Spotify is booming as a music streaming service. But now the Swedish start-up company is facing a huge claim for damages amounting to 1.6 billion dollars. Wixen Music Publishing – a music publisher that holds the rights to songs by Neil Young, Rage Against the Machine and Joseph Arthur, among others – is accusing Spotify of infringing its copyrights. The company is said to have used songs for years without paying royalties to the music publisher.

The lawsuit was filed with a federal court in Los Angeles at the end of 2017.

Spotify celebrates success – artists come away empty-handed

The reason for the lawsuit becomes clear in the statement of claim. While Spotify has become a billion-dollar company in recent years, songwriters and their music publishers have not been able to share in this success. The music industry is booming – but musicians and publishers are not benefiting from this.

“In many cases, Spotify has used their music without a license and without remuneration,” the statement of claim reads.

Spotify used 11,000 titles without paying license fees

According to Wixen, Spotify has published around 11,000 of the music publisher’s tracks on its streaming service. Wixen is now demanding compensation of 150,000 dollars for each of the songs; a total of 1.6 billion dollars.

Poor remuneration for artists is not an isolated case

However, this does not appear to be the first lawsuit against Spotify. Back in May, Spotify set up a fund of 43.45 million dollars in the dispute over exploitation rights in order to avert a class action lawsuit from musicians. But this does not seem to be nearly enough.

According to its own figures, the music streaming service cracked the 60 million paying users mark in the summer. This makes Spotify the undisputed number 1 on the market. However, artists have been increasingly complaining about unfair and unequal payment for years. The pop singer Tylor Swift led the way. She boycotted Spotify for a long time by not releasing her albums on Spotify. Since summer 2017, however, she has also given in and made all her albums available to customers again.

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