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This article reads like a press release from the plantiff (Wixen) and took a little googling to unwind. Long story short, it sounds like there's disagreement ab

by basseq 9y ago

This article reads like a press release from the plantiff (Wixen) and took a little googling to unwind. Long story short, it sounds like there's disagreement about what type of license Spotify needs. Spotify has previously claimed that streaming is not "reproduction" and is more akin to "performance"... and they (may) have those licenses. What they do not have (in some cases?) is a "mechanical" license[1], which carries requirements for notification and payment that Spotify claims are onerous.[2] Thus, I'd re-write the lede of this story to: Music streaming company Spotify was sued by Wixen Music Publishing Inc last week for allegedly using thousands of songs... without [the right kind of] license and [associated kind of notification and] compensation to the music publisher. [1] https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/what_is_mechanical_license.html https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/what_is_mechanical_li... - Incidentally, this is HFM, the same firm Spotify uses for "third-party" licensing. They define a mechanical license to include the right to "reproduce and distribute copyrighted musical compositions (songs) on ... interactive streams and other digital configurations." Seems a little damning for Spotify. [2] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/spotify-dont-compare-us-napster-1034247 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/spotify-dont-compa...

DrJokepu 9y ago
It’s kind of a gray area, the whole performing/mechanical rights system was obviously invented before streaming. Radio stations pay for performing rights, so the question arises whether streaming is more like radio broadcast or manufacturing and distributing physical copies (e.g. CDs)? Without further legislation, ultimately only the courts can decide that. My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category, separate from performance, mechanical or sync rights.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  It's also the reason behind ridiculous things like DRM. The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    It’s an endless boon to piracy, which should have largely died if not for the rampant greed and incompetence of publishers.
    - sideshowb 9y ago
      I agree publishers were incompetent (in clinging onto old models rather than adapting), but has streaming really helped the average artist? Having the option to distribute music for free has been good, for sure Setting the expectation that music should be near enough free, less so You could argue this is one of those public good situations universal income is designed to address, but it certainly hasn't yet.
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        For the vast majority of history, musicians were not some of the wealthiest members of society, far from it. Music has traditionally been “near free” and only ceased to be during a brief period necessitated by tech. That period has long since ended. I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        How would you feel if someone were applying this argument to software development? At any rate, rich, world-famous artists are the least harmed by changes in the music industry.
        CamperBob2 9y ago
        How would you feel if someone were applying this argument to software development? I'd ask how much FOSS software is running on your machine right now, and how you intend to pay for it...
        9y ago
- shams93 9y ago
  On a logical level it should be treated the same as broadcast radio, however it gets hazy because you can store playlists and play tracks on demand so its really not clear cut. With radio you can hear the song if it happens to be playing but there is no on demand, no playlists.
  - bambax 9y ago
    There is replay; you can search many radio stations playlist for a specific title and play it. What about Youtube? It seems most / all music is on YT, what licence do they use? Streaming services seem a lot like YT.
    - cortesoft 9y ago
      I think only music owners are allowed to post to YT, so they don't need a license like Spotify would.
      - DrJokepu 9y ago
        But you see, the thing is with commercial music is that the music owner is not a single entity. There is a composer, if there are lyrics there is a lyricist, if it was translated then there is a translator, if it’s a cover or remix there is an arranger, there is a publisher that published the music, there might be a sub-publisher, then there is a record label… One of the main reasons behind the existence of this complex system of rights is the complex ownership structure of the copyright and related rights.
        notatoad 9y ago
        Isn't this the reason vevo exists? youtube pays a single royalty based on playback and leaves it to the uploader to split it up between all the interested parties.
        DrJokepu 9y ago
        Yes, that’s a common arrangement.
- ryen 9y ago
  >My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category That could get complicated if labels and artists have clauses to be involved in any new rights management categories. Everyone might have to renegotiate from the bottom up.
- copywronged 9y ago
  These rights should be negotiated relative to consumer rights: if my music subscription fee pays for mechanical licensing as well as performance, I should be free to copy that music for personal offline use.
zodPod 9y ago
Thank you for this! I was quite shocked that Spotify would just outright steal a bunch of songs and publish them without any kind of license. This makes a lot more sense.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
By the way, indenting comments makes them frustrating to read on mobile. The generally preferred method on HN is to begin the line with a > and optionally wrap the quote in * (asterisks) to make it italicized.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  > The generally preferred > method on HN is to begin > the line with a > The problem with ">"-style quoting, is that the markup doesn't recognize them. Nor does it preserve the preceding newline. So if you are quoting anything more than a one-liner, you get a mess.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    That's true. HN is a little too lean on the markup. Even though that is considered one its main features, HN would definitely benefit from a markup for quotes.
  - foota 9y ago
    You can double newline like this, to get a line break
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    That's why the italics. Anyways, HN formatting sucks.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    @foota, yes double-line break kinda works. But it forces each line to be a para and that looks ugly. I prefer to use italics in these cases as @akvadrako suggests. But italics is not great either, because the light-weight syntax with asterisks is really meant for a small bits of text. It gets brittle for long texts which might include asterisks, or other things that confuse the markup.
joeblau 9y ago
There really is a place in this world for straight up news.
intopieces 9y ago
> Spotify has previously claimed that streaming is not "reproduction" and is more akin to "performance"... and they (may) have those licenses. Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it. It once lived as a copy on their servers, now it lives as a copy on their servers and on the subscriber's device. I could see, however, the argument going this way: a true reproduction is permanent, such as when a user burns a copy of a CD and distributes it to a third party. In this case, there are now two copies in the world. With offline mode (I think) those files are only playable so long as the software checks in with the service to ensure the subscription is still active.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it." I agree with this. Even if it only lives an encrypted cache you are effectively doing a bit by bit reproduction when you offline sync. They do expire once the user hadn't logged in for some amount of time, I believe it's something like after 30 days of not logging in or refreshing a token. Before streaming when someone bought a CD they bought just that copy you weren't permitted to make a copy of that CD at any time.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about. Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about." No thats exactly what copyright it about. Its called a mechanical license and it is a type of copyright. See: https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights And Specifically: "Mechanical licenses apply to reproduction and distribution of musical works on records and CDs, in permanent digital downloads, and in some other digital uses."[1] >"Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital" Copying bytes of a track into a buffer for transmission is not the same as storing a complete copy of the track on persistent storage i.e a downloaded copy done as part of an "offline sync." [1] http://guides.lib.umich.edu/permissions/music http://guides.lib.umich.edu/permissions/music
guelo 9y ago
I would have thought that at this point with so many music streaming services all the legal stuff would have been figured out by now.
- taneq 9y ago
  "Move fast and break things", remember? Who cares if the legal stuff is a quagmire, just scale your user base and hope someone buys you out before the shit hits the fan.
bigbluedots 9y ago
If a mechanical license was required by Spotify, wouldn't that mean I'd be able to keep copies of the songs forever, even if I stopped paying them?
- croshan 9y ago
  Maybe. Apparently renting CD's is a copyright infringement.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  No.
easytiger 9y ago
I wonder how this works as they've been available on Spotify for as long as I can recall. I assume they will have to show they requested discussion on the licensing long before taking extraordinary measures such as this. Wixen allegedly represent Neil Young who is founder of a now defunct (I believe) digital music distribution service called Pono^ focused around lossless encoding. To quote Neil himself (as CEO) when he had to shut the service down by Apple acquiring their store partner=. he said: I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing, but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should not be priced this way. Basically he was squeezed by licensers to pay more because he had a higher fidelity product: Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the same, regardless of the technology used. I think they just wanted him to not cloud much much bigger deals and gave him the cold shoulder. Young is one of the most productive workers in the history of music and clearly a dedicated, business minded chap. I'd have a hard time believing he isn't involved in this in some way or perhaps the death of their client Tom Petty has liberated their ability to pursue anti consumer legal avenues for short term revenue generation. ^ https://www.ponomusic.com/ https://www.ponomusic.com/ = http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-his-digital-player-20170423 http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-...
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  Wixen are pretty notorious for acting like this, they don't need Neil Young to be pulling the strings.

by basseq 9y ago

DrJokepu 9y ago

It’s kind of a gray area, the whole performing/mechanical rights system was obviously invented before streaming. Radio stations pay for performing rights, so the question arises whether streaming is more like radio broadcast or manufacturing and distributing physical copies (e.g. CDs)? Without further legislation, ultimately only the courts can decide that. My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category, separate from performance, mechanical or sync rights.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
It's also the reason behind ridiculous things like DRM. The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  It’s an endless boon to piracy, which should have largely died if not for the rampant greed and incompetence of publishers.
  - sideshowb 9y ago
    I agree publishers were incompetent (in clinging onto old models rather than adapting), but has streaming really helped the average artist? Having the option to distribute music for free has been good, for sure Setting the expectation that music should be near enough free, less so You could argue this is one of those public good situations universal income is designed to address, but it certainly hasn't yet.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      For the vast majority of history, musicians were not some of the wealthiest members of society, far from it. Music has traditionally been “near free” and only ceased to be during a brief period necessitated by tech. That period has long since ended. I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        How would you feel if someone were applying this argument to software development? At any rate, rich, world-famous artists are the least harmed by changes in the music industry.
        CamperBob2 9y ago
        How would you feel if someone were applying this argument to software development? I'd ask how much FOSS software is running on your machine right now, and how you intend to pay for it...
        9y ago
shams93 9y ago
On a logical level it should be treated the same as broadcast radio, however it gets hazy because you can store playlists and play tracks on demand so its really not clear cut. With radio you can hear the song if it happens to be playing but there is no on demand, no playlists.
- bambax 9y ago
  There is replay; you can search many radio stations playlist for a specific title and play it. What about Youtube? It seems most / all music is on YT, what licence do they use? Streaming services seem a lot like YT.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    I think only music owners are allowed to post to YT, so they don't need a license like Spotify would.
    - DrJokepu 9y ago
      But you see, the thing is with commercial music is that the music owner is not a single entity. There is a composer, if there are lyrics there is a lyricist, if it was translated then there is a translator, if it’s a cover or remix there is an arranger, there is a publisher that published the music, there might be a sub-publisher, then there is a record label… One of the main reasons behind the existence of this complex system of rights is the complex ownership structure of the copyright and related rights.
      - notatoad 9y ago
        Isn't this the reason vevo exists? youtube pays a single royalty based on playback and leaves it to the uploader to split it up between all the interested parties.
        DrJokepu 9y ago
        Yes, that’s a common arrangement.
ryen 9y ago
>My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category That could get complicated if labels and artists have clauses to be involved in any new rights management categories. Everyone might have to renegotiate from the bottom up.
copywronged 9y ago
These rights should be negotiated relative to consumer rights: if my music subscription fee pays for mechanical licensing as well as performance, I should be free to copy that music for personal offline use.

zodPod 9y ago

Thank you for this! I was quite shocked that Spotify would just outright steal a bunch of songs and publish them without any kind of license. This makes a lot more sense.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

By the way, indenting comments makes them frustrating to read on mobile. The generally preferred method on HN is to begin the line with a > and optionally wrap the quote in * (asterisks) to make it italicized.

adrianratnapala 9y ago
> The generally preferred > method on HN is to begin > the line with a > The problem with ">"-style quoting, is that the markup doesn't recognize them. Nor does it preserve the preceding newline. So if you are quoting anything more than a one-liner, you get a mess.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  That's true. HN is a little too lean on the markup. Even though that is considered one its main features, HN would definitely benefit from a markup for quotes.
- foota 9y ago
  You can double newline like this, to get a line break
- akvadrako 9y ago
  That's why the italics. Anyways, HN formatting sucks.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  @foota, yes double-line break kinda works. But it forces each line to be a para and that looks ugly. I prefer to use italics in these cases as @akvadrako suggests. But italics is not great either, because the light-weight syntax with asterisks is really meant for a small bits of text. It gets brittle for long texts which might include asterisks, or other things that confuse the markup.

joeblau 9y ago

There really is a place in this world for straight up news.

intopieces 9y ago

> Spotify has previously claimed that streaming is not "reproduction" and is more akin to "performance"... and they (may) have those licenses. Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it. It once lived as a copy on their servers, now it lives as a copy on their servers and on the subscriber's device. I could see, however, the argument going this way: a true reproduction is permanent, such as when a user burns a copy of a CD and distributes it to a third party. In this case, there are now two copies in the world. With offline mode (I think) those files are only playable so long as the software checks in with the service to ensure the subscription is still active.

bogomipz 9y ago
>"Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it." I agree with this. Even if it only lives an encrypted cache you are effectively doing a bit by bit reproduction when you offline sync. They do expire once the user hadn't logged in for some amount of time, I believe it's something like after 30 days of not logging in or refreshing a token. Before streaming when someone bought a CD they bought just that copy you weren't permitted to make a copy of that CD at any time.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about. Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about." No thats exactly what copyright it about. Its called a mechanical license and it is a type of copyright. See: https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights And Specifically: "Mechanical licenses apply to reproduction and distribution of musical works on records and CDs, in permanent digital downloads, and in some other digital uses."[1] >"Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital" Copying bytes of a track into a buffer for transmission is not the same as storing a complete copy of the track on persistent storage i.e a downloaded copy done as part of an "offline sync." [1] http://guides.lib.umich.edu/permissions/music http://guides.lib.umich.edu/permissions/music

guelo 9y ago

I would have thought that at this point with so many music streaming services all the legal stuff would have been figured out by now.

taneq 9y ago
"Move fast and break things", remember? Who cares if the legal stuff is a quagmire, just scale your user base and hope someone buys you out before the shit hits the fan.

bigbluedots 9y ago

If a mechanical license was required by Spotify, wouldn't that mean I'd be able to keep copies of the songs forever, even if I stopped paying them?

croshan 9y ago
Maybe. Apparently renting CD's is a copyright infringement.
Mindwipe 9y ago
No.

easytiger 9y ago

I wonder how this works as they've been available on Spotify for as long as I can recall. I assume they will have to show they requested discussion on the licensing long before taking extraordinary measures such as this. Wixen allegedly represent Neil Young who is founder of a now defunct (I believe) digital music distribution service called Pono^ focused around lossless encoding. To quote Neil himself (as CEO) when he had to shut the service down by Apple acquiring their store partner=. he said: I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing, but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should not be priced this way. Basically he was squeezed by licensers to pay more because he had a higher fidelity product: Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the same, regardless of the technology used. I think they just wanted him to not cloud much much bigger deals and gave him the cold shoulder. Young is one of the most productive workers in the history of music and clearly a dedicated, business minded chap. I'd have a hard time believing he isn't involved in this in some way or perhaps the death of their client Tom Petty has liberated their ability to pursue anti consumer legal avenues for short term revenue generation. ^ https://www.ponomusic.com/ https://www.ponomusic.com/ = http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-his-digital-player-20170423 http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-...

Mindwipe 9y ago
Wixen are pretty notorious for acting like this, they don't need Neil Young to be pulling the strings.