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It might be the player pianos that inspired the law or it might be a reference to how the license works: it’s what the law calls a compulsory license. It’s not clear what the word “mechanical” actually means. As music technology evolved, mechanical licenses did, too, following the shift from player pianos to physical records and finally to digital downloads and certain kinds of streaming (delightfully labeled “digital phonorecord deliveries” in legal jargon). Outraged, the songwriters went to Congress, and the next year, “mechanical licenses” were created as part of the Copyright Act of 1909 to provide royalties to songwriters. In 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that player piano companies were not required to pay royalties to songwriters, and piano rolls didn’t fit the definition of sheet music. The songwriters claimed that the piano rolls were equivalent to sheet music and that they were entitled to royalties. Before recorded music existed, songwriters made their money by selling sheet music, but the manufacturers of piano rolls that played their songs didn’t pay them a dime. When player pianos became popular at the turn of the century, they posed a threat to the music industry. It’s really a story about how, in a time when services, labels, and artists have never been better poised to work under a centralized, automated system for licenses and royalties, everyone keeps punching themselves in the face instead. Spotify is not so much about paying the artists. The question of what would be fair to pay artists is a contentious one, but the story of Wixen v.
![spotify player spotify player](https://www.sketchappsources.com/resources/source-image/spotify-2017-player.jpg)
It makes no sense in the age of Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music.
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A paper notice requirement made sense in the age of player pianos when songwriters could hardly be expected to keep track of every player piano roll in the country. The weird part is that Spotify is fundamentally being sued for literal paperwork: Wixen says Spotify is legally required to notify songwriters in writing that they’re in the Spotify catalog - a fact that escapes probably zero songwriters today. Yes, the automated pianos with the rolls of paper with punch holes in them.īut that’s not actually the weird part. Spotify is being sued by Wixen because of mechanical licenses - a legal regime that was created in reaction to the dire threat to the music industry posed by player pianos. And as Spotify’s IPO filing notes in its section on risk factors, the company is dependent on third-party licenses, which makes its business model especially vulnerable to any hiccups in the bureaucracy of music licensing. The amount of money that songwriters are making through streaming services like Spotify is oddly low, but the Wixen lawsuit itself exists in a bizarre universe of convoluted legal provisions that have very little bearing to fairness, common sense, or even how the technology actually works. Spotify is fundamentally being sued for literal paperwork