Spotify to pay out $112m in royalties to songwriters after settlement

The streaming company will recompense songwriters not paid enough royalties, but one unhappy music publisher claims ruling is ‘a free pass on wilful infringement’

Spotify will pay out $112m (£83.5m) in a settlement agreement, following two lawsuits that claimed songwriters hadn’t been paid enough in royalties for their work being streamed on the service.

The class action, a combination of the two lawsuits, originally came from David Lowery, an musicians’ rights advocate from the band Camper Van Beethoven, and Melissa Ferrick, a songwriter and owner of a music publishing company. They each asserted that Spotify had failed to obtain proper licences to songwriters’ work; Ferrick accused them of “wholesale copyright infringement”.