Spotify Sued for Copyright Infringement Again
By Sam Sodomsky.
Spotify has been hit with two lawsuits for copyright infringement, as THR reports. In separate suits, a Nashville-based publisher and songwriter claim that the streaming service failed to obtain the necessary licenses to stream works from their respective catalogs. In one suit (obtained by Pitchfork), Bob Gaudio—a songwriter and founding member of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons—is suing Spotify for the use of 106 of his compositions. Bluewater Music Services Corporation lists 2,399 songs in the other complaint, according to Variety. Both ask for $150,000 per instance—the maximum penalty for copyright infringement in the United States. The court document claims, “Spotify’s apparent business model from the outset was to commit willful copyright infringements first, ask questions later, and try to settle on the cheap when inevitably sued.” Spotify declined to comment to Pitchfork.
In June, Spotify settled a class action lawsuit from Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery, which alleged that the company was “distributing copyrighted material without securing the necessary mechanical licenses.” In response, Spotify announced that it would establish a $43.4 million fund “to compensate songwriters and publishers whose compositions the service used without paying mechanical royalties.”
This story originally appeared on Pitchfork.
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