Middle Eastern music streaming service Anghami is being sued by Reservoir Media and PopArabia for copyright infringement. According to Billboard, the lawsuit was filed in Abu Dhabi just before Christmas, but has only come to light now. It names 12 works that the publishers believe are being infringed, with a mixture of international and Arabic songs. Judging by Anghami’s official response, there is clearly some needle behind this particular legal dispute. “Despite having this claim for a handful of songs, we assert that Anghami is more than willing to sign a license with publishers no matter how small or big they are, as long as such license is negotiated and implemented with a scientific method with regards to identification of actual market share, legal capacity and provided representation is confirmed especially in the case of a sub-publisher,” said its head of licensing Saurabh Poddar.
During our research for this story we found a post by distributor Too Lost from seven months ago, warning its clients that a dispute between Anghami and PopArabia may result in takedowns of tracks using publishing rights controlled by the latter – so this is clearly not a recent falling out.
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