PiracyWatch: Music Publishers Target Project Playlist, Popular Online Music Locator

Posted by Eriq Gardner

The major music publishers have teamed together on a big new copyright lawsuit against Project Playlist, a hot viral website that has taken off since launching in late 2006.

Atlantic, Capitol, Elektra, Interscope, Motown, Priority, UMG, Virgin, and Warner together filed this complaint in U.S. District Court in New York against the Beverly Hills-based Project Playlist, which has become one of the most popular interactive streaming music sites on the Internet with more than 600,000 daily active users. The publishers allege that by holding itself out as "an information location tool," Project Playlist's "exploitation of this 'world of music' amounts to nothing more than an enormous infringement of copyrighted sound recordings for Defendant's commercial gain." 

Project Playlist has also developed traction with an embeddable music player used at MySpace and Facebook. The company says it is "committed to copyright protection" and maintains that it does not host any music files, but instead merely links to files on many third-party sites, including many on record label websites.

One company conspicuously absent from the suit was SonyBMG, which according to reports, is negotiating a revenue sharing deal with Project Playlist.

The plaintiffs, represented by Eva Temkin at Robbins Russell, are seeking unspecified damages.