Wixen, an exclusive licensee of songs such as “Free Fallin” by Tom Petty, “Light My Fire” by the Doors, (Girl We Got a) Good Thing by Weezer and works of singers such as Stevie Nicks, is seeking damages worth at least $1.6 billion along with injunctive relief.

Spotify failed to get a direct or a compulsory license from Wixen that would allow it to reproduce and distribute the songs, Wixen said in the lawsuit, filed in a California federal court.

Wixen also alleged that Spotify outsourced its work to a third party, licensing and royalty services provider the Harry Fox Agency, which was “ill-equipped to obtain all the necessary mechanical licenses”.

Spotify declined to comment.

In May, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company agreed to pay more than $43 million to settle a proposed class action alleging it failed to pay royalties for some of the songs it makes available to users.

Spotify, which is planning a stock market listing this year, has grown around 20 percent in value to at least $19 billion in the past few months.

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Source: Reuters

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Warner was the last of the three big record labels to agree to renewed terms to make its catalogue available to Spotify’s 140 million users.

However, Spotify has been forced to agree to some limitations to get the labels to sign.

Artists and labels have in the past complained about minuscule revenue from steaming sites when compared to downloads or physical sales.

But with the deals with Sony, Universal and now Warner in place, Spotify is expected to float on the New York Stock Exchange as early as this year.

“Our partnership with Warner Music Group will help grow the new music economy where millions of artists can instantly connect with fans, and millions of fans can instantly connect with artists,” Spotify’s chief content officer Stefan Blom told the BBC.

‘Inventive ways’

Posting on Instagram, Warner Music chief digital officer Ole Obermann said: “It’s taken us a while to get here, but it’s been worth it, as we’ve arrived at a balanced set of future-focused deal terms.

“Together with Spotify, we’ve found inventive ways to reinforce the value of music, create additional benefits for artists, and excite their fans all over the world. Even with the current pace of growth, there’s still so much potential for music subscription to reach new audiences and territories.”

The “inventive ways” were not outlined, but if Warner Music’s deal is similar to those agreed with Sony Music and Universal, it is likely to include a clause allowing the labels to hold back certain songs from Spotify’s non-paying users for a limited period of time. Such a move would increase the royalties for artists who are unhappy at the lower earnings generated by streaming services.

Speaking about the Universal deal agreed in April, Spotify founder and chief executive Daniel Ek explained that “artists can choose to release new albums on premium only for two weeks, offering subscribers an earlier chance to explore the complete creative work, while the singles are available across Spotify for all our listeners to enjoy”.

According to the latest public figures, Spotify has 60 million paying customers – just under half of its entire user total. Its nearest competitor, Apple Music, has 27 million subscribers.

Spotify has long been expected to float on the New York Stock Exchange, but was holding off until the major deals were struck to offer clarity to investors over future expenses.

Reports suggest Spotify will not have an initial public offering (IPO) when it does go public.

Almost all companies IPO when going public to raise money and offer shares to more investors, but Spotify is expected to simply list on the NYSE without a sale. That tactic which would mean an increase in share value for its existing, private investors.

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Source: BBC

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Earlier this week, a music news website published a list of 37 “white power” bands which were being streamed online.

Less than 48 hours later, Spotify announced they had removed some of the bands from its service in America.

The Swedish company says it is also considering taking down the other named artists on the list.

However, many of the artists in question are still available for streaming in the UK.

Newsbeat has contacted Spotify but it hasn’t confirmed whether they’d be removed in other parts of the world.

“The music in our catalogue comes from hundreds of thousands of record companies and aggregators all over the world, and those are at first hand responsible for the content they deliver,” they said in an official statement.

“Spotify takes immediate action to remove any such material as soon as it has been brought to our attention.”

“We are glad to have been alerted to this content – and have already removed many of the bands identified today, while urgently reviewing the remainder.”

Spotify also gave a second statement to Billboard magazine, which outlined its stance on offensive music.

“Illegal content or material that favours hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us,” it said.

The artists named in Digital Music News’s recent article include British artists, including Coventry band Skinfull, a group of middle-aged men who “say whatever we want regardless of who we may offend”.

Artists removed from Spotify had very low numbers of subscribers and play counts on the service.

Earlier this week, Reddit removed its “Physical Removal” sub-Reddit (a section of the website) because of its alt-right content.

In 2014, iTunes removed music with white supremacy messages from its download service after the Southern Poverty Law Centre (a service which monitors hate groups in America) raised the issue.

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Source: BBC

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It will display news stories, features, videos and music chosen on the basis of previous searches by the same user.

Users will also be able to click a “follow” button on search results to add topics of interest to their feed.

One analyst said the move would help Google compete with rivals.

“Google has a strong incentive to make search as useful as possible,” said Mattia Littunen, a senior research analyst at Enders Analysis.

“Facebook’s news feed is one of its main rivals. It is competing with other ways of accessing content.”

Google has been trialling a simpler version of its news feed in its smartphone app since December, and its full news feed will be added to its smartphone apps in the US first.

But the company has now confirmed it intends to add the feature to Google.com too.

Google is known for its sparse homepage, which, though mostly white space, has, according to analytics firm Alexa Internet, become the world’s most-visited website.

The feed will include news stories from a variety of publishers, to avoid the so-called filter bubble effect, where people follow only content aligned with their pre-existing point of view.

“To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources… and, when available, you’ll be able to fact check,” the company said in a blog post.

The search giant already offers some context-based information in its smartphone search app in the form of Google Now cards, but discontinued its personalised homepage service iGoogle in 2013.

Items in the new personalised feed can be tapped or clicked to launch a Google search for more information.

“Search ads are more lucrative than in-feed ads such as Facebook’s,” said Mr Littunen.

“Google’s business is based on selling advertising, so this gives them more contact points with consumers.”

The company did not divulge whether it would insert advertisements or sponsored posts into the feed, but Mr Littunen suggested the focus of the service was to make Google more useful and drive users to its other services.

“Google has a long term project of anticipating user needs. It’s a move to make sure people aren’t going elsewhere for information,” he told the BBC.

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Source: BBC

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A music industry publication listed 50 artists it claimed were not real.

They have racked up millions of streams by appearing on mood-based playlists such as Sleep and Ambient Chill, but many have no other visible profile.

However, one industry expert told the BBC Spotify was “not committing a crime” if it was commissioning tracks or buying production music.

“We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop,” Spotify said in a statement.

“We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rights holders and we pay them – we don’t pay ourselves.”

Low profile

Some of the artist names in the list, compiled by Music Business Worldwide (MBW), did appear to have a presence on other platforms – generally rival services such as LastFM and YouTube – when checked by the BBC, but most had no website or social media presence in their own right.

For example Relajar, which has racked up 13.4 million streams, comes up only on Spotify in internet search results.

“We’re pretty sure A&R [artist and repertoire] teams from across the globe would love to hear about artists with no online presence who have managed to rack up millions of Spotify plays with their first few tracks,” wrote MBW.

Mark Mulligan, from Midia Research, said that Spotify could be commissioning others to produce content which it then pays lower royalties for in return.

“Labels are scared because they suspect this is the thin end of the wedge, but it’s not forcing those artists to do it,” he said.

It was also possible that Spotify was buying existing production music from other companies, Mr Mulligan said.

Some artists choose not to attach their real names to this sort of material.

“We still don’t have the smoking gun – there’s no proof of payment,” he said.

“This is getting creative about how Spotify might try to not have to pay out for all the music it plays.

“Ten years into the Spotify experiment, it still hasn’t made a profit despite being the most successful music-streaming platform on the planet.”

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Source: BBC

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Nominated for the Brits critics’ choice award and the BBC Sound of 2016, the singer has a knack for achingly beautiful ballads that tug at the heartstrings.

Songs like Let It Out and Say It Again have earned her more than 50 million streams on Spotify – and top 10 singles around the world (although not at home, thanks to the current state of the UK singles chart).

Born Sophie Frances Cooke in Berkshire, she was an aspiring violinist when her teacher sent her to see a film composer for career advice.

On a whim, she played him a pop song she’d written for fun – and moved him to tears.

“It was a bit awkward,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Are you ok?’ and he said, ‘Yeah. But you need to do that. You have to do that for the rest of your life.”

She took his advice – choosing to attend the pop-focussed Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts instead of her original choice, the Birmingham Conservatoire.

By the time she reached her third year of studies, she’d already been signed by a record label and moved to London.

Her debut album, Things I’ve Never Said, comes out this week. A warm and wistful collection of perfectly-crafted piano pop, it has already won the singer comparisons to Adele and Carole King.

Meanwhile, her single Grow has been selected to soundtrack a new campaign by Refuge, the charity supporting female victims of domestic violence.

The 23-year-old sat down to tell the BBC about that video; the perks of fame; and what it’s like to get school lessons from Paul McCartney.

Hello Frances… Or should I call you Sophie?

I’m Sophie to my family and friends – but I once thought, “If I’m going to be an artist, my name’s got to look good on a piece of paper”. Sophie is very curly, it looks very young, whereas Frances is a lot more angular. So it just kind of stuck.

But then up until the age of 16, everyone called me Cookie. So anything goes.

It’s been three years since your first single – you must be relieved the album is finally out?

I’m so excited. It’s definitely been a while. I wrote some of these songs when I was 18 or 19, and so they’ve literally been with me for five years.

It’s unusual for people to stay fond of the songs they wrote in their teens.

Actually, at the time, I didn’t think much of them! But they made it through all the label cuts and slashes. They stood the test of time.

What are the oldest ones on there?

I wrote Drifting and Sublime in my room at LIPA – the performing arts school up in Liverpool.

That’s the one that Paul McCartney founded, right? Did he ever show up?

A couple of times. He’d come in to do little Q&As.

He was really nice, if you saw him walking past, you could just say “hi” and he was always really sweet.

What’s the best advice you got from him?

He said that when he and John [Lennon] were writing, they didn’t have anything to record what they were doing… Whereas now, if I’m writing in a session, I’ve got my phone there recording everything. And so if I forget something I can go back and find it.

But he said, “We didn’t have that luxury. So if we forgot something, it wasn’t good enough and we didn’t use it.”

I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so true.” Because if you’ve written something and 10 minutes later you don’t remember it, then it’s not good enough.

Do you stick to that advice even now?

No, because my memory’s terrible!

One of the first songs you released was Grow… and that’s now being used in a very powerful video for Refuge.

It’s amazing. It’s about a woman called Melanie Clark, who had a terrible time, a really abusive partner, and she managed to get out of it by seeking help from Refuge.

They’ve animated her story. It’s basically about her feeling invisible until one woman, who represents Refuge, notices her for the first time. It’s a campaign to encourage victims of domestic abuse to seek help. We want people to realise they are not alone.

The original song isn’t about domestic abuse at all. Were you surprised by how well the words and the images complement each other?

It’s weird how the lyrics make so much sense alongside the story. I just hope it will resonate with people all over the world. It’s an amazing animation and everyone’s done it for free.

Would it be fair to say you’ve always wanted to play music?

Absolutely. My best friend’s parents were professional violinists. When I was about eight, I went round to her house, picked one up and fell in love with it. Then her dad taught me all the way up ’til I was about 16 or 17.

What grade did you get?

Eight. I absolutely loved it.

What was your exam piece?

I did a kind of a gypsy piece called Csardas. It’s so fast – and it speeds up towards the end, as well. And then I started the piano when I was 10 – but I only got to grade six. I couldn’t be bothered to do scales any more.

Do you remember your first stage performance?

I was three, dressed as an ice cream in a production of The Hungry Caterpillar at the Royal Festival Hall! And then throughout school, I was always on stage, playing violin or piano. And I played in the Berkshire Youth Orchestra.

You sound like a high achiever. Were you good academically, too?

I was quite lucky at school. I had this little charm – I could not do my homework and somehow get away with it.

Everyone knew I worked so hard at music. I was doing stuff after school every day, so the teachers were quite lenient.

And then you went to LIPA…

Actually, I didn’t get in the first time. They put me on their foundation course, which cost like 10 grand or something. My parents, bless them, scrambled together every penny we had and I worked at Waitrose trying to get money to go.

How did you get signed?

I put a song called Coming Up For Air on SoundCloud in early 2014. It was quite calculated – because at the time London Grammar were really big, so I thought, “OK, I’m going to write something like that, so all the blogs listen and pick up on it”. Eventually, a few started writing about it and then Tom Robinson from 6 Music played it which was really cool.

After that, we ended up having a meeting with [boutique record label] Kitsuné, and released a single.

Don’t Worry About Me was a big breakthrough for you. How did that come about?

One of my friends was quite ill – and I wrote the song to say, “look after yourself and I’ll be here for you”.

I wrote it really quickly. I was just getting off the bus on Kilburn High Road when I came up with the phrase, “I’ll feel the fear for you, I’ll cry the tears for you, don’t worry about me.” I ran home thinking, “I need to get to a piano quickly, I don’t want to lose this.”

It’s a very emotional performance.

I think because I wrote it so quickly. I was thinking about my friend and the lyrics just came out.

Don’t Worry About Me has been played nine million times on Spotify. How do you wrap your head around that?

I don’t really. I always said that if I won the lottery, I’d be more excited by £100,000 than I would with £1m because I can’t understand a million pounds. I’ve never seen that. I can’t quantify it. Whereas a hundred grand, I can think, “ah, that’s a really nice car”.

It’s a weird period for music at the moment… You can have all those plays, and millions of people know your song, but it hasn’t troubled the charts in the UK.

It’s a really weird time. In Belgium, Don’t Worry About Me was in the top 20 for 10 weeks and that’s mainly because in Belgium the singer-songwriter world is their Radio 1. In Australia, it hung around the chart for ages. In the UK, I’ve just come out at a really funny time. There’s a weird limbo.

But I’m so proud of my album. I know it’s not going to sell 20 million copies but that’s OK. I want to be an artist that’s going to be around for 20 or 30 years.

In a strange way, you’re famous to the people who know you and nobody else.

It’s actually lovely because I can walk down the street and not be bothered. Apart from in John Lewis once, where the manager recognised me while I was buying a sofa.

He was like, “Excuse me, can I ask you a question?” and I thought, “Oh no, my card’s been rejected” but he was like, “Can I get a picture with you?”

And I think he paid for my sofa because I took out finance and I haven’t paid a penny yet.

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Source: BBC

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Reporters from new site Ars Technica found Spotify was writing up to 10GB of data an hour to their computers.

Unnecessarily writing and rewriting data to some types of computer hard drive can shorten their life.

Spotify said it was aware of the issue and was taking steps to address it in its latest version.

The issue was more likely to be problematic for people using a solid-state hard drive (SSD) in their device.

Data on SSDs can be read and rewritten a limited number of times before the drive begins to fail.

A large volume of unnecessary activity by the Spotify player could therefore bring about a drive’s failure earlier than expected.

‘Lazy coding’

Ars Technica found that Spotify wrote and rewrote up to 700GB of data – the equivalent of more than 100 movies – over a 24 hour period.

Many people shared their concerns on social news site Reddit, highlighting that the app even rewrote the data while it was idle and no music was being streamed.

Ken Munro, from cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners, said the problem was “either an error or lazy coding”, but said more modern SSDs could tolerate more data-writing cycles.

“SSD ‘wear’ used to be a very significant issue when they first emerged,” he told the BBC.

“Since then, manufacturers have made significant advances in reducing this and extending lifespans.

“It would take a long while to wear out an SSD nowadays, but that doesn’t really excuse the Spotify bug!”

The problem affected people using the app on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

Spotify said: “We’ve seen some questions in our community around the amount of written data using the Spotify client on desktop.

“These have been reviewed and any potential concerns have now been addressed in version 1.0.42, currently rolling out to all users.”

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Source: BBC

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The so-called malvertising affected Spotify’s subscription-free service on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

People reported that virus-infected pop-up websites were appearing while they listened to music.

Spotify said in a statement: “We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down.”

It said “questionable website pop-ups” had affected a “small number of users”.

Cybersecurity experts have warned that malvertising is on the rise, because the scale of popular advertising networks can be misused to push malicious content to a wide audience.

“Malvertising can slip onto any platform or website that displays ads delivered by advertising networks,” said Jan Zika of antivirus firm Avast.

“While malvertising is usually hosted on sites that provide illegal content such as movie downloads, it does occasionally make its way on to more mainstream platforms, such as Spotify.

“Users should install antivirus software that will catch malvertising before it can do any harm.”

It is not the first time Spotify has inadvertently distributed malware-infected content through its advertising network. A similar issue affected the software in 2011.

Other prominent companies have also been targeted.

Malicious advertisements

“We’ve seen an increase in malvertising of this kind,” said Rahul Kashyap of the computer security company Bromium.

“Malware via ads provides great return of interest for the attackers and are difficult to be reliably blocked at the ad launch.”

The company said it had found that more than a quarter of the world’s 1,000 most visited websites had delivered malware through malicious advertisements in 2015.

Spotify said it would “continue to monitor” advertisements in its software.

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Source: BBC

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