Just two weeks after being sued by artists over alleged unpaid royalties, Spotify is being slapped with another suit over similar alleged damages. The plaintiff, a group of recording artists, led by Melissa Ferrick, are seeking $200 million in damages from the streaming giant. The plaintiffs are being represented by Los Angeles law firm Gradstein & Marzano.
The suit claims that instead of filing for direct licenses or using compulsory mechanical license mechanism, Spotify outsourced its licensing and accounting to Harry Fox Agency. The suit via Billboard claims that HFA "was ill-equipped to obtain licenses for all of the songs embodied in the phonorecords distributed by Spotify."
The lawsuit lists more than 125 songs by Ferrick that have been streamed about 1 million times on Spotify. Ferrick and the other, yet-to-be-named class members, would be entitled to $150,000 in damages per song.
Gradstein & Marzana also claim that Spotify have fallen into the trap that many other streaming services have been accused of doing in an attempt to grow quickly. They allege that the company has decided to "infringe now, apologize later. Spotify chose expediency over licenses."
"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," claims the lawsuit.
Spotify has not commented on the latest lawsuit against them, but after the first suit worth $150 million, the company did note that they have paid $3 billion in royalties since its inception.
This is the second suit against Spotify in two weeks. On Monday, Dec. 28 it was hit with a class-action suit led by David Lowry of the rock bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven for an approximate $150 million in royalties worth up to between $750 and $150,000 per violation.
