This one can cost Spotify a pretty penny...and by "pretty penny" we're talking billions of dollars. The Hollywood Reporter detailed a lawsuit that Eminem's publisher, Eight Mile Style, has recently filed against the streaming giant. According to Eight Mile Style, Spotify has been streaming 250 of the Detroit rapper's songs without permission. They reportedly don't have the license to make Em's songs available, but they've allegedly backdoored the process.
THR states that Eminem's tracks are being streamed under a "Copyright Control" category that was created specifically for songs where copyright holders cannot be found or identified. However, Marshall Mathers isn't exactly a stranger or unknown artist. Court documents against Spotify say, "First, by its terms, the MMA liability limitation section only applies to compositions for which the copyright owner was not known, and to previously unmatched works (compositions not previously matched with sound recordings), and not to 'matched' works for which the DMP [Digital Music Provider] knew who the copyright owner was and just committed copyright infringement."
In layman's terms, Eight Mile Style asserts that Spotify knew the songs were copyrighted and were well-aware of who the copyrights belonged to, but went ahead with their activities anyway. The company also states that they haven't been accurately compensated for the billions of streams Spotify has obtained. “Spotify has not accounted to Eight Mile or paid Eight Mile for these streams but instead remitted random payments of some sort, which only purport to account for a fraction of those streams,” they said. Eight Mile Style is seeking an unspecified amount.