Big Labels Take Aim at Pandora on Royalties

The music industry has opened a new front in its war against Pandora Media: royalties for songs made before 1972.

Several major record companies filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing Pandora of violating the state’s common-law copyright protections by using recordings of older songs without permission. Along with a string of cases filed against Sirius XM Radio, the suit highlights an obscure legal issue that has come to the fore with the rise of streaming music online: that recordings made before Feb. 15, 1972, are not subject to federal copyright protection and may be missing out on tens of millions of dollars in royalties, according to industry estimates. In the suit, the three big labels -- Sony, Universal and Warner Music -- along with ABKCO, an independent label that controls the rights to many early songs by the Rolling Stones, accuse Pandora of playing old songs without licenses. Like the suits against Sirius XM -- the band the Turtles (“Happy Together”) acted first, with a $100 million class-action suit, and the labels followed with their own complaint -- the case argues that even though songs from before 1972 are not under federal copyright, Pandora should have to get permission to use them under state law.