The great thing about these music services offered online these days is that it gives us access to a huge library of songs. These songs can either be the latest radio hits or they could be oldies from back in the day, but unfortunately it looks like those oldies might no longer be made available if the lawsuit against Beats, Sony, Google, Rdio, Songza, Slacker, and Grooveshark were to succeed.
A lawsuit has been filed against those companies over alleged unpaid royalties for songs recorded prior to 1972. The suit is being led by Zenbu Magazines who are the owners of several of these songs. The lawsuit also alleges that these companies had misappropriated its content and are illegally profiting by selling subscription services without paying royalties to the owners of the songs.
The reason why there has not been an issue before this is because of a copyright law amended by Congress which basically protected songs recorded after the 15th of February 1972, however a case brought to court and successfully won by The Turtles back in 2013 have set a precedent, which might explain why this lawsuit is taking place.
It is unclear how these companies will proceed with the lawsuit, but it has been speculated that should the cost of the royalties exceeds that the amount that these companies makes, then it would just be easier and cheaper for them to take it out of rotation entirely. In any case we will be keeping our eyes peeled for more information, but in the meantime would you miss any of these songs should they be taken out of rotation from these music streaming services?
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