Mikey Campbell
Streaming music services like Apple's Beats Music, Google Play, Rdio and others are targets of a new volley of lawsuits claiming unpaid royalties on certain pre-1972 songs, potentially ending access to these older tracks.
The suit being leveled in California District Court by Zenbu Magazines, Inc., current owners of multiple tracks recorded prior to 1972, claims Apple's Beats Music and other streaming services misappropriated its content and illegally profited by selling subscription services without paying out royalties.
Along with Beats, Zenbu has filed identical suits against Sony, Google, Grooveshark, Rdio, Songz and Slacker citing the same issues, seeking class certification in each case. The suits were filed on Thursday and later reported by GigaOm.
According to plaintiffs' lead attorney Jack Fitzgerald, the streaming services copied and uploaded to their servers "tens of thousands" of songs recorded prior to Feb. 15, 1972 — the cutoff date for sound recordings to be afforded copyright protection under federal law — for distribution to paying customers. In Beats' case, the 1969 song "Sin City" by The Flying Burrito Brothers was cited as an example.
It is unclear if Zenbu's catalog is popular with on-demand customers and the papers do not detail potential licensing estimates, but if Apple and others determine the cost of keeping the content online does not warrant royalties, the songs may be taken out of rotation altogether. Such a decision could have repercussions on other pre-1972 songs, as seen in separate cases successfully leveraged against digital radio station SiriusXM.
Christine McKee
Charles Martin
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
26 Comments
Seeing as streaming services pay musicians approximately 1 cent for every million plays, I see this as a storm in a teacup.
Apart from executive salaries I'd like to see lawyer expenses for these tech companies. And the number of man hours it takes from board members, key managers.
Seeing as streaming services pay musicians approximately 1 cent for every million plays, I see this as a storm in a teacup.
Apple may be forced to pay a ton of money. SiriusXm lost and had to pay $100 million.
EDIT: I wanted to clarify SiriusXm didn't lose to Zenbu. Zenbu's lawsuit is basically the same thing others sued SiriusXM over.
I don't understand the complaint. If federal copyright law for pre-1972 songs has expired then where is the duty to pay royalties? Did I miss something?
I don't understand the complaint. If federal copyright law for pre-1972 songs has expired then where is the duty to pay royalties?
Did I miss something?
The issue is copyright law. They won against SiriusXm because they argued the music was protected on state level and the judge ruled in their favor.