{"id":135050,"date":"2022-07-22T13:43:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T12:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=135050"},"modified":"2022-07-22T13:43:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T12:43:08","slug":"epidemic-sound-hits-meta-with-142m-lawsuit-for-rampant-infringement-of-its-music-on-facebook-and-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/epidemic-sound-hits-meta-with-142m-lawsuit-for-rampant-infringement-of-its-music-on-facebook-and-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"Epidemic Sound hits Meta with $142m lawsuit for ‘rampant infringement’ of its music on Facebook and Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweden-headquartered production music house Epidemic Sound has hit Facebook parent company Meta with a multi-million dollar lawsuit for the alleged “theft” of \u201cthousands\u201d of its works.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed in California on Wednesday (July 20), Epidemic Sound claimed that its legal action seeks \u201cto stop the theft of music created by hundreds of musicians, songwriters, producers and vocalists, theft occurring knowingly, intentionally and brazenly by Meta on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms on a daily basis\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Epidemic Sound is described in the filing as the owner of \u201ca catalog of over 38,000 top quality music works in over 160 genres, for use in video content, television and film productions, podcasts, music streaming platforms and other media\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company, founded in 2009, and led by co-founder and CEO, Oscar H\u00f6glund, was given a $1.4 billion valuation<\/a> in March last year when it took on a $450 million funding round \u2013 including money from investment giant Blackstone and EQT Growth.<\/p>\n

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As first reported<\/a> by TorrentFreak<\/em>, the Swedish music company claims that Meta has \u201cignored Epidemic\u2019s repeated notices of infringement and requests for access to the tools that would help stop the infringement\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta has refused to enter into a license with Epidemic, even though Meta has done so with many other rights holders.”<\/p>\n

Epidemic Sound\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adds Epidemic Sound in the suit: \u201cMeta has refused to enter into a license with Epidemic, even though Meta has done so with many other rights holders.<\/p>\n

“Perhaps Meta is hoping to get away with it for as long as possible. Perhaps Meta is hoping that it will intimidate a company like Epidemic into bowing to Meta rather than incurring the disruption and expense of a lawsuit. Meta is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Epidemic Sound also alleges that Meta \u201chas created tools\u201d whose \u201cprimary purpose is to increase the amount of theft\u201d on its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n

According to the music company, Meta\u2019s alleged \u201cunlawful conduct\u201d has resulted in more than \u201c80,000 new instances of theft of Epidemic\u2019s works per day\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the filing, Epidemic claims that it learned that Meta “has been storing, curating, reproducing, and distributing Epidemic\u2019s music without authorization, offering Epidemic\u2019s music for free without proper attribution or license”.<\/p>\n

Epidemic claims that Meta is offering its works through its own music library “for any of its users to use, including to download, stream, or incorporate into video content, for free, without license or other authorization”.<\/p>\n

In the company’s lawsuit against Meta, Epidemic seeks to make the distinction between alleged infringement by Meta and infringement by its users, claiming that “Meta would like to believe” and “will undoubtedly tell this Court” that the latter is true, and not the former.<\/p>\n

“These infringing uses are not merely users posting infringing works that Meta has failed to take down,” claims Epidemic Sound, adding that the alleged “infringement is caused and done by Meta itself”.<\/p>\n

“This case is about Meta creating features which allow and encourage users to easily reproduce and synchronize Epidemic\u2019s music without authorization and without compensation to Epidemic, its songwriters and recording artists.”<\/p>\n

Epidemic Sound<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adds Epidemic Sound: “This case is about Meta itself actively and directly infringing Epidemic\u2019s works by storing them in its online music library and then making a curated selection of Epidemics\u2019 works available across its platforms.<\/p>\n

“This case is about Meta creating features which allow and encourage users to easily reproduce and synchronize Epidemic\u2019s music without authorization and without compensation to Epidemic, its songwriters and recording artists.”<\/p>\n

Epidemic claims further that “the unauthorized use” of its works across Meta\u2019s social platforms “is rampant”.<\/p>\n

Epidemic says that its music is available “across millions of videos and have been viewed billions of times” and that it believes that “approximately 94% of content using Epidemic\u2019s music on Meta\u2019s platforms is unlicensed and thus infringing”.<\/p>\n

The music company is demanding maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the works it believes have been infringed, with the total damages sought adding up to “no less” than $142 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swedish music company claims that Meta has \u201cignored” its “repeated notices of infringement and requests for access to the tools that would help stop the infringement\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":66208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}