California-based Wixen Music Publishing has sued the streaming music provider, Spotify for $1.6 billion. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division on December 29, 2017.
Wixen is an independent music publisher who administers more than 50,000 songs written and/or owned by its more than 2,000 clients. The publishing company is seeking injunctive relief and damages in the amount of $150,000 for each song listed; the list is comprised of more than 10,000 songs.
Wixen alleged the streaming service is using tens of thousands of songs without license. Some of those songs include artists that Wixen is the exclusive licensee for, the artists include Tom Petty, Santana, Journey, The Beach Boys, The Doors, Janice Joplin, and Stevie Nicks to name a few.
Wixen stated “Spotify brazenly disregards United States Copyright law and has committed willful, ongoing copyright infringement.” Wixen further claimed that “Spotify has built a [billion-dollar] business on the backs of songwriters and publishers whose music [they are] using, in many cases without obtaining and paying for the necessary licenses.”
Wixen filed the lawsuit shortly after the Music Modernization Act was introduced in December 2017. This bill became effective January 1, 2018, and it will enable “digital music companies to find the owners of the music they use and [reform] the rate setting process for performing rights, ensuring that songwriters and music publishers are paid faster and more fairly than ever before.”
In light of this new bill, Randall Wixen, President of Wixen Music Publishing, stated “[n]either we nor our clients are interested in becoming litigants but we have been faced with a choice of forfeiting rights and damages, or taking action at this time. We regret that this otherwise admirable proposed bill has had this effect, and we hope that Spotify nonetheless comes to the table with a fair and reasonable approach to reaching a resolution with us. We are fully prepared to go as far forward in the courts as required to protect our clients’ rights.”
Although Spotify does pay royalties to artists and holders of the rights to songs, this is not the first time the service has been accused of infringement or criticized for their practices. Taylor Swift has been one of the most vocal artists to speak up about the practices of Spotify. She believed artists were being unfairly compensated for their works and at one point refused to have her songs released to the streaming site stating, “[m]usic is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free.”
In the lawsuit, Wixen alleged that Spotify failed to compensate “songwriters royalties to a publishing company 21% of the time,” which is an estimated 6,300,000 compositions.
In May of 2017, songwriters David Lowery and Melissa Ferrick sued Spotify in a class action lawsuit for failing to pay them royalties for their work. Spotify offered to settle the case and paid the songwriters $43 million.
The Sweden-based Spotify was launched in the US in 2011, and currently has more than 140 million active followers and 60 million subscribers. The company has over 30 million songs in its catalog and is planning a stock market listing this year as the company’s value has risen to $19 billion in the past few months.
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