After receiving just $5.05 from the HFA, Lowery says…
”You’re kidding me right? What is this for? No accounting? No cover letter. Is this some sort of “bait” check? ”
Lowery suspiciously dubs the check a ‘sleazy legal trick’ to obtain a ‘implicit license’, and questions if other independent artists received the same.
Lowery wants transparency – He wants to know in-depth details which include: tracks being streamed, number of spins, accounting time period, and how the HFA arrived at this amount. A mere $5.05 check doesn’t cut it…
Lowery says the choice is clear and simple for songwriters and publishers.
Do you want ”a backroom deal between related parties OR a transparent court supervised process?”
If you opt for the former, you’re more than likely going to end up with something like this…
Things are going from bad to worse for Lowery…
The check comes during a lengthy and expensive legal battle between Lowery and Spotify over unpaid royalties, which includes the NMPA and HFA.
Spotify has been under fire over unpaid royalties for some time. As a result they hired the Harry Fox Agency (a former subsidiary of NMPA) to obtain mechanical licenses of songwriters and publishers that opted into their service, as well as sending ‘Notices of Intent’ on Spotify’s behalf for those songwriters and publishers who haven’t yet opted into their service. Is this a conflict of interest? Lowery thinks so.
Something went wrong in Lowery’s case – their was no license obtained, no ‘notice of intent’ sent and no royalties paid. This prompted Lowery to file a massive $150 million class action lawsuit against Spotify, which has been ongoing since December 28th 2015. The lawsuit alleges that Spotify is distributing copyrighted content while skipping key royalties.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Spotify announced an out-of-court agreement with the NMPA, and this is when things got a little interesting.
The agreement aimed to create a better way of finding publishers who are rightfully owed streaming royalties, as well as dealing with the mass of money apparently being held by Spotify for unmatched royalties. But, Lowery claims that it was a direct attempt by Spotify to deflate the class action and says that the streaming platform is ”using misleading information to push putative class members into a lowball royalty settlement with the National Music Publishers Association.”
Lowery then requested access to review all communications Spotify USA issues to putative class members related to its settlement with the NMPA, but Spotify fought back saying that Lowery is making baseless claims and continuously changing the goal posts.
But, if Lowery is receiving checks like this, there’s no wonder he’s complaining. And if there is no revenue breakdown for the artist how are they meant to know if the payment is right or not?
(Image by Pictures of Money, Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic, cc by 2.0)
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