Eminem publisher sues Spotify for wilful copyright infringement over 'Lose Yourself'

Eminem's publisher Eight Mile Style has filed a lawsuit that claims Spotify infringed copyright on hundreds of the rapper's songs, as well as challenging a recently passed music licensing law – claiming it is unconstitutional.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the suit filed this week in Nashville accuses the streaming giant of wilful copyright infringement by reproducing Eminem's hit "Lose Yourself" and approximately 250 of his other songs on its service, at a cost of potentially billions of dollars in alleged damages.

The suit claims that Spotify has no license for Eminem's compositions, and despite streaming them billions of times "has not accounted to Eight Mile Style or paid Eight Mile Style for these streams but instead remitted random payments of some sort, which only purport to account for a fraction of those streams".

It alleges that Spotify placed "Lose Yourself" in a category called "Copyright Control", which is reserved for songs where the owner is not known. In the suit, Eight Mile Style attacks the "absurd" notion that it is not possible to identify the publisher as the owner of the iconic song, which was a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and won an Oscar for Best Original Song after featuring in the 2002 film 8 Mile, in which Eminem starred.

The suit also accuses Spotify of violating sections of the Music Modernisation Act (MMA), which was passed in October 2018 with the intent of helping to streamline the process by which artists, songwriters, producers and copyright holders are paid for online music streams.

Eminem's publicist told The Verge that the rapper and his team were "just as surprised as anyone else" by the news of the suit, which Eminem is not party to because Eight Mile Style owns the earlier part of his catalogue.

Eight Mile Style is being represented by legal heavyweight Richard Busch, the attorney behind the notorious "Blurred Lines" case that saw Marvin Gaye's family successfully sue songwriters Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and TI.

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