Sosa, an independent music company based in Florida and it's sister company Pro Music Rights LLC, after suing Spotify for mistreatment has sued Apple, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Soundcloud, Pandora, Deezer, 7Digital, iHeartRadio and Rhapsody for copyright infringement.
The suit, filed against Spotify in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, claimed that Sosa has not been paid full royalties associated with over 550 million streams on Spotify. Noch’s companies seek “over $1bn in damages”.
The lawsuit was filed against Spotify in November. It claims that the tracks associated with 550m streams were removed by the platform in a process which began “in or about” May 2017, and were chopped from the service “without advance notice and without ever telling why their songs were removed”.
Sosa alleges that Spotify “manually blanket-banned” the tracks, and then deliberately and maliciously blacklisted from its platform the Plaintiffs and their founder, Jake Noch, along with each and every single artist, composer, and writer associated with the parties.
PMR has, via a press release now revealed that it has filed 10 separate copyright infringement actions against other music streaming services, for “the unauthorized public performance of its members’ copyrighted musical works”.
Pro Music Rights says it represents approximately 2,000,000 musical works from various artists. The company estimates its US market share as a PRO at 7.4%.
Some of the works alleged to have been infringed by the 10 defendants, says the company, “feature notable artists such as A$AP Rocky, Wiz Khalifa, Pharrell, Young Jeezy, Juelz Santana, Lil Yachty, MoneyBaggYo, Larry June, Trae Pound, Sause Walka, Trae Tha Truth, Sosamann, Soulja Boy, Lex Luger, Lud Foe, SlowBucks, Gunplay, OG Maco, Rich The Kid, Fat Trel, Young Scooter, Nipsey Hussle, Famous Dex, Boosie Badazz, Shy Glizzy, 2 Chainz, Migos, Gucci Mane, Young Dolph, Trinidad James and Fall Out Boy”.
Each of the lawsuits seeks “the maximum $150,000.00 for each act of willful infringement with respect to the copyrights involved in the action.”
Pro Music Rights CEO Jake P. Noch said: “Each of the music streaming services sued has made a business decision to use music without compensating songwriters.
By filing these actions, Pro Music Rights is standing up for songwriters whose creative works bring great value to all streaming services who publicly perform their music."
Author: Shubham Jindal
