Google Play Music Hit With Unpaid Royalty Class Action

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Electronic music duo The American Dollar has expanded their proposed class action lawsuit over unpaid mechanical royalty claims and copyright infringement, adding Google Play Music streaming service to their roster of defendants that include Tidal and Slacker Radio.

According to the filing against Google Play Music, band musician John Emanuele and his publishing company Yesh Music claim that while Google Play Music did serve two notice of intentions (NOIs) covering four tracks the band uploaded to Google Play Music, the band did not receive correctly executed notices of intent from Google about streaming their creations.

“Independent artists are predominantly impacted by Defendant’s systematic infringement,” the Google Play Music lawsuit states. “Defendant has not licensed the mechanical rights to the musical compositions of Plaintiffs’ and the Putative Class Members’ or otherwise received authorization from them to reproduce or distribute such Compositions to its users and subscribers.”

Emanuele asserts that Google is obligated to serve NOIs regarding each song uploaded to its streaming service within 30 days of the original upload date and the first issue Emanuele has with the ones he has received is that they “failed to account for the vast majority of tracks” he and his partners offered to Google Play Music. Furthermore, the ones that he did receive were allegedly invalid as they were apparently pre-dated and were not served “remotely close” to the aforementioned 30-day period.

Additionally, the NOIs also provided a license for a year, and Google kept playing them after that year was up, according to the complaint. While Emanuele claims Google Play Music only declared its intentions regarding four of his songs and even though the terms it offered weren’t agreed to by him, the company “dumped” all 116 of uploaded songs into its streaming service and played them while not paying a cent in royalties to this date.

“Defendant Google is not a newcomer to streaming music, and is well-aware of its obligations under Section 115,” the complaint says. “Defendant created its now 38 million track library by dumping all of the music from independent artists into the Google Music Service without serving [notices of intent].”

All of the lawsuits filed in the last few weeks by The American Dollar in New York federal court against Google Play Music, Tidal, and Slacker Radio were classified as proposed class actions because Emanuele’s legal team believes more artists were cheated out of their royalties and are eligible for damages.

Emanuele and Yesh Music are seeking damages of between $750 and $30,000 for each composition that has been infringed, and up to $150,000 “for a willful infringement,” which means the value amounts are estimated to be between $3.48 and $17.4 million.

The plaintiffs are represented by Richard M Garbarini of Garbarini FitzGerald PC.

The Google Play Music Class Action Lawsuit is Yesh Music LLC et al. v. Google Inc., Case No. 1:16-cv-01566, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.