Spotify is facing another foe of its streaming services in British electronic music label Ministry of Sound. MoS is suing Spotify, alleging that the company refuses to acquiesce to its requests that playlists bearing similarities to the label's famous compilations be taken down.
Ministry of Sound has been selling its renowned compilation albums since 1995, featuring a collection of mixes and mashups created by DJs on the Ministry label. As most of the mixes are made up of previously copyrighted material, the label must buy licensing rights in order to distribute the compilations. Those licensing rights do not include streaming rights, therefore Ministry doesn't allow services like Spotify to feature its albums. However, some fans have found a way around the problem by uploading tracks individually, and then assembling playlists that are essentially, and ofter identical to, the Ministry of Sound compilations.
Lohan Presencer, the chief executive at MoS, said that Spotify has been less than understanding of the problem.
"It's been incredibly frustrating. We think it's been very clear what we're arguing, but there has been a brick wall from Spotify," he said. "What we do is a lot more than putting playlists together: a lot of research goes into creating our compilation albums, and the intellectual property involved in that. It's not appropriate for someone to just cut and paste them."
The case revolves around whether the track listing qualifies for the same copyright protection under the concept of intellectual property. In other words, can the arrangement of songs in a particular order being copyrighted? Spotify had no comment on the lawsuit as of press time.
More than one billion playlists have been made on Spotify by users since the service's founding in 2008.
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