Music Streaming and Copyright

Introduction to Music Streaming and Copyright

These days when people want to listen to one of their favorite tracks, all they do is tune in to any of the music streaming services like Spotify or Tidal. Not only are these services relatively cheap and easily accessible, but they also provide the listener with a gigantic music library that holds a massive collection of songs. As these apps have led to the transformation of the digital music marketplace by becoming the go-to platforms for listening to music, there have been stringent regulations in place to avoid music piracy and copyright infringement.

With the rise of social distancing and stay-at-home orders, the demand for online content has increased exponentially.

Online Digital Music – An Increasing Diverse Market

Right before streaming of music took the world by storm, the music industry had always reaped benefits from sales of physically distributed music such as cassettes, CDs, and LPs.  Soon after the advent of digital music, there was a huge concern regarding unlicensed streaming, unauthorized access, and stream-ripping entities. As music piracy and IP infringement began to cost the industry billions of dollars, there came into existence regulations in the form of mechanical licenses. As per the 1996 WIPO Internet Treaty, digital music services have been granted rights to operate and extend their offerings to consumers beyond their national territories and expand globally. 

Requirements to Stream Music Online

To stream music online and reproduce the tracks in certain formats, the platforms should deposit a fee and commission to mechanical licensing administrators such as Harry Fox for securing the license. Though this license is not deemed an unlimited one, it is considered mandatory for all streaming services to secure this license to operate in their territories. In layman’s terms, it basically means paying a fee to the publisher of the music each time someone streams the track. There are several other licenses that these platforms need to purchase such as recording licenses from the record labels and performance licenses which is a royalty fee paid to the owner of the composition.

Music streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and Amazon Music have always worked towards fighting IP infringement by incorporating and refining a multitude of tracking procedures to detect potential misuse or abuse on the platform that could lead to illegitimate and unauthorized streaming of music. They have also imposed restrictions on remixes of songs as it could potentially lead to copyright infringement on artists’ rendition. Despite establishing measures to prevent music piracy, a lot hasn’t been done in this sphere as the music creators are reluctant to enter into legal battles especially because they believe their creation is not renowned or considered valuable by the public.

Copyright Infringement by Spotify

In 2018, Spotify had come under the radar for having allegedly infringing upon thousands of songs that were produced by the music company Wixen Music Publishing. Spotify was sued for streaming more than 20 percent of songs from their library that carries over 30 million songs, without holding a license or paying a royalty to the publisher. It was around the same time that the streaming giant was accused by Bob Gaudio and Bluewater Music Services Corporation of failure to adhere to IP guidelines and evading the payment of mechanical licenses for music being streamed on Spotify.

Conclusion

Today, with the pandemic jeopardizing the live music industry, the way forward should entail a realignment of initiatives towards the ownership of streaming rights and implementation of a compulsory copyright certificate for all musical compositions and copyright for music in general.

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