Jan 10, 2016
Spotify has once again been slapped with a class action suits in regards to copyright infringement.
Last week, we reported on the $150 million suit faced by the streaming giant, filed by musician David Lowery. Now, law firm Gradstein & Marzano have reportedly filed a similar suit on behalf of artist Melissa Ferrick, calling for $200 million in damages. The suit claims that Spotify outsourced their licensing and accounting obligations to the Harry Fox Agency. According to Billboard, the case claims that HFA “was ill-equipped to obtain licenses for all of the songs embodied in the phonorecords distributed by Spotify.”
Furthermore, the allegations claim that Spotify chose to “employ a now familiar strategy for many digital music services -- infringe now, apologize later. Spotify chose expediency over licenses.”
At least 125 of Ferrick's songs, allegedly streamed upwards of one million times, are mentioned in the suit. Ferrick as well as other as-yet-unannounced plaintiffs, may be entitled to up to $150,000 in damage for each infringed piece of music.
The lawsuit argues that, “While Spotify has profited handsomely from the music that it sells to its subscribers, the owners of that music (in particular, songwriters and their music publishers) have not been able to share in that success because Spotify is using their music for free.”
Spotify has not yet commented on the suit. It recently announced that it had paid more than $3 billion in royalties since the company was first founded.
Image: Spotify