As of Monday night, Spotify users in the U.S. no longer have access to the Victory Records catalog. The streaming music giant dropped the content due to a current battle over unpaid artist royalties, sister company Another Victory Publishing claims.
According to a piece in The Wall Street Journal, an audit by Audiam Inc. revealed that Spotify hasn't paid royalties for millions of plays of various songs in their immense catalog. Audiam CEO Jeff Price commented on the issue, stating "Spotify has pulled down the Victory Records sound recordings in response to us asking for them to pay for the 53 million streams that have not yet been paid on."
WSJ further reported that Spotify's global head of communications and public policy, Jonathan Prince, replied to the comment, stating, "Given that we don't have that information, we felt we had no choice but to temporarily take down their content until we can come to a resolution."
As reported by WSJ, the Another Victory head replied to Prince's comment, insisting that Audiam gave Spotify the data five months ago, showing nearly 3000 songs that lacked proper reimbursement.
The massive record dump includes old albums from bands like Taking Back Sunday, Bayside, Silverstein, The Audition, A Day to Remember, Hawthorne Heights, Aiden, Thursday, Streetlight Manifesto, and Straylight Run, just to name a few.
Hawthorne Heights, A Day To Remember, and Streetlight Manifesto have all aired their own issues with Victory Records in the past, ADTR even suing at one point for breach of contract, according to Stereogum.
Unfortunately for Spotify users in the U.S., at least for now, it looks like they'll be seeking other outlets to hear some of their favorite songs like Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut From the Team)" The catalog, however, remains on Spotify in other countries.
