Just as Gaana announced its 100-million-users milestone in India, so its latest rival was revealing a new dispute with a key label partner in that country. Spotify has promised to remove the catalogue of one of the key Indian labels, Saregama, within the coming days – after the label took it to court in Delhi.
“Spotify had approached Saregama to get a license for streaming the latter company’s musical works on its platform. The negotiation talks between the parties also began and the terms of the licence were discussed,” reported Indian legal website Bar & Bench. “Subsequently, on Spotify’s request, Saregama also provided copyright of its work a month prior to the launch of Spotify in India. The license agreement, however, could not be finalised and Saregama requested Spotify to block all of its work on the app.”
Given Spotify’s separate dispute with publisher Warner/Chappell over its Indian launch, questions will undoubtedly be asked about its negotiating strategy in this particular territory – and perhaps also what that augurs for Spotify’s approach to its next set of worldwide licensing agreements too: will any hardball tactics in India be replicated on the global stage? But the short-term headache for Spotify is the loss of 120,000 songs from Saregama, which include plenty of well-loved classics.
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