Eminem publisher sues Spotify
August 22, 2019
Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, is suing music streaming giant Spotify. It claims the Spotify has failed to correctly copyright the popular rapper’s work.
Eminem – real name Marshall Bruce Mathers – has never been properly paid for songs “streamed on Spotify billions of times”, court papers say.
And Spotify, which has yet to respond publicly, put the song Lose Yourself into a category for unknown authors, without copyright protection, which Eight Mile Style has described as “absurd”.
Lose Yourself, recorded and produced by Eminem and his collaborators Jeff Bass and Luis Resto for, featured in the movie 8 Mile was the first hip-hop song to win an Academy Award.
Besides Lose Yourself, there are another 242 Eminem tunes in question including Stan, Without Me, and The Real Slim Shady.
Eight Mile Style is suing for approximately £30 million, the maximum damages for each of what it says are copyright-infringed songs.
“Spotify acted deceptively by pretending to have compulsory and/or other licences,” court papers claim. The publisher also accuses Spotify of not complying with the 2018 Music Modernisation Act.