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Message: [QUOTE="Shamiso, post: 94055, member: 160"] Spotify could face a €538 million ($619 million) bill if The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) wins its full royalty claim. That figure comes from the streaming firm's latest financial report, and it does not cover extra fines or interest. The amount has grown by €65 million since the prior quarter, when Spotify put its risk at €473 million. Both estimates cover unpaid sums the MLC alleges began building up in 2024. But there is a catch. A federal judge has already agreed with Spotify that Premium counts as a bundle under US royalty rules. The MLC would need to overturn that finding to win the full amount. Spotify's latest earnings offer some scale. The service had 306 million paying users and made €672 million in quarterly operating profit. Its legal risk estimate sits close to that profit figure, though no court has ordered such a payment. The numbers have kept rising since the case began. Spotify first put its possible bill at €46 million. It later climbed to €256 million, then €410 million, and finally €473 million before reaching its current level. Recent jumps have been fairly steady. One quarter added €63 million, while the latest brought another €65 million. Earlier growth averaged just over €54 million per quarter across a full year. Spotify has not said what caused the latest rise. It does say that direct music publishing deals could cut any final amount owed, though the size of that reduction is unclear. At the heart of the fight is how Spotify counts audiobook access within Premium. The MLC claims that this setup led to smaller royalty payments for songwriters and publishers than the rules require. Judge Analisa Torres backed Spotify on the basic bundle issue and threw out the first complaint. Yet the MLC was later allowed to file a new version of its case, which remains active. That revised lawsuit looks at how Spotify puts a value on each part of Premium. It also raises concerns about the royalty data Spotify gave for its Audiobooks Access plan. The MLC tried to get an early appeal of the bundle decision, but Torres said it had not shown a strong legal reason for one. The judge held that the rule was clear about pairing music with another service of real value. Spotify also lost one part of its defense. Torres removed its claim that the MLC had treated other music services differently over bundles with books. She found that argument had no valid legal basis. The case is heading toward a ruling based on the court record, rather than a full trial, if the judge agrees that no trial is needed. Both sides have a deadline to submit letters seeking that process. Meanwhile, Spotify has made direct US publishing deals with Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt, Sony Music Publishing, and BMG. Those contracts may affect how much it might owe under the dispute. The same bundle issue has also reached Phonorecords V, where US royalty rates for streaming will be set for 2028 through 2032. In that separate process, the National Music Publishers' Association and Nashville Songwriters Association International allege that Spotify has kept more than $500 million in mechanical royalties they believe should have gone to writers and publishers. For the main lawsuit, the €538 million remains a possible outcome, not a debt confirmed by a court. The final amount, if any, will depend on how the remaining legal claims play out. [/QUOTE]

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