Streaming leader Spotify has been hit by a new copyright lawsuit seeking $200 million, in the second such case within weeks. The lawsuits, each filed by individual artists in a US federal court in Los Angeles, ask a judge to create a class-action suit in which other alleged victims can collectively seek damages.
The latest lawsuit was filed Friday by Melissa Ferrick, the Massachusetts-based indie folk singer who teaches at the prestigious Berklee College of Music and rose to prominence as Morrissey's last-minute opening act on his 1991 tour. Ferrick accused Spotify, which boasts of providing a massive selection of on-demand music, of failing to inform copyright owners when it created phonorecords, the files used to provide the instant music online.
Ferrick charged that the Swedish company, not wanting to delay its growth including its US launch in 2011, took "a now familiar strategy for many digital music services - infringe now, apologize later." Spotify was hit in late December by another lawsuit seeking a class-action suit filed by David Lowery, the leader of alternative rock bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven who is also an academic.