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Call now - It has been confirmed today that the UK based record label The Ministry of Sound has filed a lawsuit against online music streaming service Spotify for damages and the removal of playlists including its tracks.
This comes after the record label has repeatedly requested that Spotify, which was founded in Sweden in 2008, to remove playlist which included its tracks and thereby infringing copyright laws.
The record label claims that they had repeatedly requested that Spotify remove the playlists which featured songs using “Ministry of Sound” in their titles, however, Spotify did not comply with these request. Along with the request of these playlist being removed from the service The Ministry of Sound has also filled for damages and losses caused by the music streaming services refusal to remove the playlists.
But does Spotify have the responsibility to remove these playlist? In short, yes. Spotify are the only people able to remove playlist from its service, other than the individuals who created the original playlist. Furthermore, Spotify is a paid for service; this means that the users of this playlist may have been paying to listen to the music without the record label receiving any form of imbursement.
While Spotify did not speak regarding the lawsuit directly they did go onto say that over 1 billion playlist have been created by its users since its launch and that over 20 million tracks are available on its service. However, you could argue that this adds further fuel to the fire with this highlighting the financial gain being made from the music streaming service which currently has 24 million users; many of which pay a monthly subscription.
The outcome of the case is yet to be seen. However, the lawsuit is sure to go ahead with legal proceedings being launched this past Monday in the UK’s high court by The Ministry of Sound.
Ashton Hudson, Online Marketing Executive
