Spotify has won a long-running lawsuit that claimed Eminem's music was illegally streamed “billions” of times on the platform, winning a ruling that slammed the rapper's publisher for filing the case in the first place.
Eminem's publisher, Eight Mile Style, sued Spotify in 2019, claiming the streamer had made hundreds of the rapper's songs available without the proper licenses. This included big hits like “Lose Yourself,” which has been streamed over 1 billion times on the service.
But in a ruling last month, a federal judge dismissed those charges entirely, ruling that Eight Mile had essentially manufactured a lawsuit for its own benefit. The publisher had known for years that his songs were being played on Spotify, the judge wrote, but chose to do nothing to build a more lucrative legal case against the streamer.
“Eight Mile Style was not an unfortunate victim,” Judge Aleta A. Trauger he wrote “While Spotify's handling of songwriters' copyrights appears to be seriously flawed, any right to recover damages based on those flaws belongs to those innocent rights holders who suffered actual harm, not those who, like Eight Mile Style , they had every opportunity to make things right. and just chose not to for no apparent reason, other than being a victim of infringement pays better than being a regular licensor.”
A lawyer for Eight Mile Style did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling. Eminem himself was not involved in the case.
At the heart of the long legal battle is the chaotic system that governed streaming rights in the US for much of the 2010s, in which streamers such as Spotify often failed to pay the right holders. This messy situation was mostly fixed with the 2018 passage of the federal Music Modernization Act (MMA), which created a single license for paying streamers.
MMA was largely inoculated by streamers like Spotify from lawsuits over past wrongdoing, wiping the slate clean if they paid for the general license and complied with other requirements. But a year after the statute was enacted, Eight Mile sued anyway—arguing, among other things, that the landmark law itself was unconstitutional because it violated due process and negated the company's copyright.
In her ruling last month, Judge Trauger avoided those high constitutional questions about the MMA altogether, saying she would leave them “for a future case involving an appropriate plaintiff.” But, like other aspects of her decision, she suggested that “creating a constitutional showdown” was another “strategic” decision by Eight Mile to secure a bigger payout.
“The MMA framework was the culmination of one of the most high-stakes policymaking efforts in copyright history, and whether that framework survives has implications for the music economy that go far beyond the rights of any individual artist. even a popular one like Eminem,” the reviewer wrote. “A lawsuit that put MMA in jeopardy could cost Spotify far more than any artist could ever claim — and could potentially warrant a more generous settlement.”
In technical terms, Judge Trauger's ruling cited the legal doctrine of equitable estoppel, which prohibits litigants from behaving unfairly to gain an advantage in court cases. Applying that rule to Eight Mile, he said the publisher “improperly chose to cultivate damages for infringement over the proper functioning of the copyright system.”
Eight Mile clearly knew that some of its most valuable IP was being used by Spotify, the judge wrote, and the entire lawsuit could have been avoided if Eight Mile had “simply sent a single, clear cease-and-desist letter.” But he said the company “simply allowed its rights to be violated.”
“Had Eight Mile Style emerged to challenge the status quo, it would have brought this situation to a much quicker end, but it did not,” Judge Trauger wrote. “The only reasonable reason for this course of action is that … allowing infringement to continue on a large scale is economically more beneficial to the alleged victim than the legitimate streaming economy would be.”
Even if Eight Mile's accusations against Spotify were legally valid, the judge ruled that damages should not be paid by Spotify. Instead, it ruled that responsibility would lie with Kobalt because the company had signed a licensing deal with Spotify for Eminem's disputed songs and had agreed to indemnify the streamer for any such legal problems.
As it was, that question was largely moot because the judge had largely dismissed Eight Mile's lawsuit. However, it ruled that Kobalt will likely have to cover Spotify's legal costs in defending the suit – likely a significant amount after five years of litigation. This matter will be the subject of future proceedings.
A spokesperson for Spotify did not immediately return requests for comment. A Kobalt spokesman declined to comment.
