Spotify Hit With $150 Million Lawsuit Over Unpaid Royalties

The streaming wars continue this week with David Lowery, frontman for alt-rock band Camper Van Beethoven, filing a major class-action lawsuit against Spotify to the tune of $150 million, Billboard reports.

The lawsuit, filed on December 28 in the Central District Court of California, alleges that the streaming company knowingly engages in unscrupulous business by distributing copyrighted works to its seventy-five million subscribers without proper licensing.

In response, Spotify's global head of communication, Jonathan Prince, has stated, "We are committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny. Unfortunately, especially in the United States, the data necessary to confirm the appropriate rightsholders is often missing, wrong, or incomplete. When rightsholders are not immediately clear, we set aside the royalties we owe until we are able to confirm their identities."

As part of the financial recompense, Lowery's lawsuit will seek money from Spotify in order to obtain a third party auditor to determine works that were improperly distributed without a license and push for the streaming service to remove all the disputed material until proper licensing has been resolved.