Spotify Argumentative Essay

Spotify, the music streaming application, has gained a large amount of publicity on the subject of how they pay the artists whose music Spotify distributes. Some artists, such as Taylor Swift, have refused to participate in the distribution of their music, citing low royalties as a complaint. These concerns raised by artists have, not surprisingly, recently turned into a number of class action lawsuits against Spotify. However, instead of taking issue with the low royalties paid to artists, those taking legal action are claiming that Spotify is failing to pay royalties to thousands of artists whose copyrighted music the app still distributes. Spotify operates as a streaming service where artists’ music is distributed. In exchange for the rights to distribute their music, given to Spotify by mechanical licenses, Spotify pays royalties to said artists.

The first, filed December 28th, 2015, was filed by David Lowery, a vocalist who alleges that “Spotify knowingly and unlawfully reproduced and distributed compositions without obtaining mechanical licenses”. ¹ A suit with similar claims was filed by a songwriter and publisher, Melissa Ferrick, in January of 2016. Spotify recently settled with the National Music Publishers Association

In a response to all the legal action, Spotify released a statement reiterating their commitment to correctly pay those whose music Spotify distributes. Spotify defends their actions with the argument that data on the correct rights to the music they use can often be incorrect or incomplete.2 With this knowledge, the company has money set aside specifically with the intent of paying it out as royalties once the company correctly identifies who it owes money