Sweden-headquartered production music house Epidemic Sound has hit Facebook parent company Meta with a multi-million dollar lawsuit for the alleged “theft” of “thousands” of its works.
In a lawsuit filed in California on Wednesday (July 20), Epidemic Sound claimed that its legal action seeks “to 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”.
Epidemic Sound is described in the filing as the owner of “a 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”.
The company, founded in 2009, and led by co-founder and CEO, Oscar Höglund, was given a $1.4 billion valuation in March last year when it took on a $450 million funding round – including money from investment giant Blackstone and EQT Growth.
As first reported by TorrentFreak, the Swedish music company claims that Meta has “ignored Epidemic’s repeated notices of infringement and requests for access to the tools that would help stop the infringement”.
“Meta has refused to enter into a license with Epidemic, even though Meta has done so with many other rights holders.”
Epidemic Sound
Adds Epidemic Sound in the suit: “Meta has refused to enter into a license with Epidemic, even though Meta has done so with many other rights holders.
“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.”
Epidemic Sound also alleges that Meta “has created tools” whose “primary purpose is to increase the amount of theft” on its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.
According to the music company, Meta’s alleged “unlawful conduct” has resulted in more than “80,000 new instances of theft of Epidemic’s works per day”.
Elsewhere in the filing, Epidemic claims that it learned that Meta “has been storing, curating, reproducing, and distributing Epidemic’s music without authorization, offering Epidemic’s music for free without proper attribution or license”.
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”.
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.
“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”.
“This case is about Meta creating features which allow and encourage users to easily reproduce and synchronize Epidemic’s music without authorization and without compensation to Epidemic, its songwriters and recording artists.”
Epidemic Sound
Adds Epidemic Sound: “This case is about Meta itself actively and directly infringing Epidemic’s works by storing them in its online music library and then making a curated selection of Epidemics’ works available across its platforms.
“This case is about Meta creating features which allow and encourage users to easily reproduce and synchronize Epidemic’s music without authorization and without compensation to Epidemic, its songwriters and recording artists.”
Epidemic claims further that “the unauthorized use” of its works across Meta’s social platforms “is rampant”.
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’s music on Meta’s platforms is unlicensed and thus infringing”.
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.Music Business Worldwide