Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music SoundExchange, the top digital royalty collection and distribution agency for the music industry, has filed a lawsuit against SiriusXM to recover an estimated $150 million in unpaid royalties and late fees owed under the Copyright Act for the use of sound recordings on the satellite streaming service.
The payments cover the past “several” years, according to the documents, and date back to at least 2018. SoundExchange previously successfully sued the satellite radio giant over claims dating from 2007 through 2017, and received a $150 million settlement the following year.
The new lawsuit, filed Wednesday with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, maintains that SiriusXM improperly manipulated the federal regulations to create an artificially low calculation of “revenue” on which it pays creator royalties.
It claims that SiriusXM “accomplished this by ascribing excessive and unjustified value to the webcasting component of its bundled packages and then removing that value from the satellite radio royalty pool.” Reps for SiriusXM did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment on Wednesday.
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