Apple Sued Over Unpaid Royalties

The main sale and attraction of streaming services is that they pride themselves in how much they pay for artist royalties. However, Apple has recently received a new lawsuit over unpaid royalties for independent artists. The lawsuit contradicts the value that they promise to artists.


In a report written by Billboard, lawyer Richard Garbarini, filed a putative class action lawsuit against Apple Music on the behalf of songwriter Bryan Eich. The lawsuit is a result of allegedly failing to license mechanical rights, which are the right to reproduce and distribute copyrighted songs for the songs that they play. The songwriter is asking for $30,000 for each song that Apple has infringed.

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It seems like the Apple streaming service is not the only one to have experienced this law suit as Spotify, Rhapsody, Tidal, Slacker and Game Play have also been to court for similar reasons.  This is the first time Apple has experienced this particular lawsuit and other streaming services that have been to court for this reason have stated that it is hard to keep track of all the publishing rights holders but with these cases they usually offer the option of filing a Notice of Intent which is something that was not done in Eich’s case. Apple has yet to give a response to the lawsuit filed.