Image courtest of Spotify
At the end of 2015, Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery filed a class action lawsuit against Spotify, alleging that the company knowingly distributes copyrighted works to its seventy-five million subscribers without first obtaining proper licensing. He is seeking $150 million in damages.This past Friday, another class action suit was made on behalf of Massachusetts artist Melissa Ferrick, similarly accusing the service of using her work without getting the necessary licensing. Ferrick's complaint says that songwriters should get more than $200 million from the company, the Los Angeles Times reports.Ferrick claims that her songs have been streamed "approximately one million times" on the service without a license.Notably, both of these lawsuits deal specifically with the reproduction of compositions (I.E—lyrics or musical notation) as opposed to the reproduction of actual recorded music.Three weeks ago, Spotify spoke to this issue with a blog post on their website: "One of our core commitments is making sure that everyone involved in the creation of music is paid fairly, rapidly, and transparently," they wrote. "Unfortunately, when it comes to publishing and songwriting royalties, especially in the United States, that's easier said than done because the data necessary to confirm the appropriate rightsholder is often missing, wrong, or incomplete." Read the full post here.Follow Alexander on Twitter.