Spotify is the largest online streaming service in the United States, and on August 21, Eminem music publisher Eight Mile Style filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against the company. The suit claims that Eminem’s songs were streamed billions of times without Spotify having the necessary license, accounting, or payment system in place. The lawsuit also claims that the Music Modernization Act, a law unanimously passed by both chambers of Congress in 2018 violates the U.S. Constitution by restricting these types of cases.
According to the lawsuit, Spotify categorized the songs under the licensing category of, “Copyright Control,” that is given to songs with unknown copyright owners. Eight Mile Style response is that categorization is “absurd” given how well-known Eminem and his music is. The lawyer on the case though is saying that this is a more significant issue about how “streaming companies do their accounting for enormous numbers of streams, each generating a fraction of a penny in payment.” And if this can happen to a global star like Eminem, then it can easily happen to smaller artists.
– Excerpt from an article for Pitchfork by Evan Minsker. Find the full article here.
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