Spotify Lawsuit: Artists Form Class Action, Plan to Sue Spotify $150M for Copyright Violations
Spotify might be facing some legal troubles after a class action of over 100 artists have filed a lawsuit seeking over $150 million in damages.
The band Cracker's frontman David Lowery started the lawsuit, claiming that Spotify has played copyrighted materials without proper licensing, Tech Radar reports.
Lowery is joined by over 100 other artists who agree that their copyrighted music is being played without proper licensing to Spotify's 75 million active users.
The lawsuit says that Spotify's actions "creates substantial harm and injury to the copyright holders, and diminishes the integrity of the works," according to a report in Billboard.
Lowery says that Spotify has illegally reproduced and hosted his Cracker songs like "King of Bakersfield," "Almond Grove" and "Tonight I Cross The Border."
Spotify is already dealing with another copyright dispute with the National Music Publishers Association.
Spotify responded to the earlier claims of copyright violations and said they have been paying artists the money that they deserve.
"We've paid well more than $3 billion in royalties to date, including $300 million in the first quarter of this year alone," the blog post said. "Unfortunately, when it comes to publishing and songwriting royalties [...] that's easier said than done because the data necessary to confirm the appropriate rightsholder is often missing, wrong, or incomplete."
Spotify also says they have set aside money for royalties that have not made it to their rightsholder yet. This could help pay for royalties for people like Lowery and those in the class action, but Spotify says that fund is a very small amount.
Spotify admitted in the past that they have not been careful with obtaining licenses. The company says they have been working on a way to make it easier and faster for the music industry to license tracks so that artists can be paid easier and faster.
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