The publishing group who owns works by Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Doors and a thousands of songs is suing Spotify for allegedly using the songs without license and compensation for a total of $1.6 Billion.
Wixen Music Publishing claims rights to over 2,000 artists including other high profile names like Weezer, Styx, Rage Against The Machine, Journey and Stevie Ray Vaughan to name a few.
Wixen's lawsuit is on the basis of Spotify's failure to pay royalties on one of two copyrights of music Wixen claims ownership to. The physical recording of a song is owned by a record label, and a separate copyright exists for the musical composition which is owned by the songwriter and publisher (Wixen in this case).
Wixen's filed suit reads, "Prior to launching in the United States, Spotify attempted to license sound recordings by working with record labels, but in a race to be first to market, made insufficient efforts to collect the required musical composition information and, in turn, failed in many cases to license the compositions embodied within each recording or comply with the requirements of Section 115 of the Copyright Act."
Last year, Spotify agreed pay a $43 million settlement in a similar case to the one Wixen is filing.
Read more about the case at Rolling Stone.
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