Spotify Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Reduced Royalty Payments (2)

Spotify Technology SA won dismissal of a lawsuit alleging it made a change to its premium service that cheated songwriters out of royalties.

US District Judge Analisa Torres on Wednesday threw out the suit, filed in May by the Mechanical Licensing Collective, which collects payments from streaming services for songwriters, composers, lyricists and publishers.

The collective claimed that the company used a legalistic word change — adding “bundled” to the description of the service — to justify reducing the revenue on which royalties are based by almost 50%. The collective is legally barred from disclosing how much the royalties ...