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Eminem’s publishing company Eight Mile Style filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against Spotify today, THR reports and documents viewed by Pitchfork confirm.
The lawsuit claims that Spotify has no license to host about 250 of Eminem’s songs including many of his biggest hits (“My Name Is,” “Lose Yourself,” “Stan,” “Without Me,” “The Real Slim Shady,” and more). Eight Mile Style says that while the songs have been streamed billions of times, “Spotify has not accounted to Eight Mile or paid Eight Mile for these streams but instead remitted random payments of some sort, which only purport to account for a fraction of those streams.”
According to the lawsuit, the songs were placed under a licensing category called “Copyright Control”—a designation given to songs with an unknown copyright owner. The complaint then calls it “absurd” that Spotify would be unable to locate the copyright owner of “one of the most well-known songs in history.”
The company also challenged the Music Modernization Act and claimed that Spotify hadn’t lived up to the law’s requirements. The act was signed into law by Donald Trump last year as he was surrounded by musicians including Kid Rock and Mike Love. The law was created to update copyright protection for songwriters and artists in the digital and streaming era.
After saying that Spotify’s actions didn’t meet the law’s requirements, Eight Mile questioned the constitutionality of the law. “The MMA’s retroactive elimination of the right of a plaintiff to receive profits attributable to infringement, statutory damages, and attorneys’ fees, is an unconstitutional denial of due process (both procedural and substantive), and an unconstitutional taking of vested property rights,” the complaint reads.
Eight Mile is seeking profits and damages. Pitchfork has reached out to Spotify for comment.