Ad-funded music streaming service Spotify, has announced that is removing and “undisclosed number of songs” from its library after it was revealed they had breached licensing restrictions.
The service, which involves music consumers downloading and installing a special app/widget, has its head office based in Sweden. Although apparently in closed beta stages, the company has stated that some tracks on the service had slipped through restrictions agreed when deals with record labels had been agreed.
Spotify goes further, and claims that tracks had been delivered by labels despite firm insistence of bands not to include their music! One has to ask is this a case of labels stuffing up? Or is it all a subterfuge to deny responsibility on the part of the ad-funded business Spotify?
The service allows consumers to share songs and playlists as well as allowing them to work together on collaborative playlists. On the services website it clearly states that they have “cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.” So how could geo-location restrictions have been missed?
The post at NMA goes on to note that Spotify is now implementing appropriate geo-restrictions as laid out in its licensing agreements as well as removing a number of tracks.
According to Andres Sehr Community Manager at Spotify, they “have not lost any licenses and no labels have stopped working with us, this is just a matter of updating our catalogue to be in line with the agreements we actually have”.
To TMV is sounds like all parties to the service content owners and managers of the service are to blame for this. Hopefully, this hiccup does not prevent the company form expanding its roll-out.
