Spotify agrees to remove Saregama’s work

Swedish music streaming platform Spotify has told the Delhi High Court that it will remove all works belonging to India's oldest music label Saregama India from its platform within 10 days.

The counsel for Spotify, the newest entrant in India's music streaming market told Justice Jayant Nath whatever work infringed the copyrights of the Saregama India would be taken off by the company.

Spotify, which provides millions of music track on phone, computer tablet and other online platforms, had launched its service in February end and has been giving strong competition to the other players in the field. In fact it had amassed one million followers with the week of its launch.

Spotify had also briefly hit a hurdle when the music label, WMG, filed for an injunction in the Bombay High Court in February over licensing rights.

Now, Spotify is facing a legal battle in the Delhi High Court with Saregama which has sought to restrain Spotify from exploiting and using its songs or doing any act which violates Intellectual Property Rights. Saregama told the High Court that the company is engaged in the business of acquisition of copyrights in the songs and sound recordings and in musical and dramatic contain.

Saregama also told the court that it has a long history in the field of recorded music in India. Saregama India Ltd, is the largest in-perpetuity global owner of both sound recording and publishing copyrights of Indian music across 14 different languages.

In February 2018, Spotify had approached Saregama to get a license for streaming the Saregama company's musical works on its platform. The parties have also begun discussing negotiation talks and the license terms.

Later Saregama also provided copyright of its work to Spotify a month prior to its launch in India. But, the license agreement was not finalised and Saregama requested Spotify to block all of its work on the app. The court has listed the matter for May 7 for further hearing.

Spotify has given a big competition to music streaming services like Gaana, JioSaavn, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Spotify, offering more than four crore songs and 300 crore playlists for music fans in the country, is available across 79 markets. Spotify has 207 million active users and 96 million of these users are Spotify Premium subscribers. The platform adds approximately 30,000 new tracks each day. Spotify is available on over 500 products across 200 hardware brands globally.