SX Sues AccuRadio; AccuRadio Responds
“AccuRadio has directly harmed creators over the years by refusing to pay royalties for the use of protected recordings,” said Michael Huppe, President & CEO of SoundExchange. “Today, SoundExchange is standing up for creators through this lawsuit to protect the value of music and ensure creators are compensated fairly for their work. We hope AccuRadio will immediately reverse course and pay what they owe for the use of the music that sits at the foundation of its service.”
Hanson continued, “Rather than ‘refusing to pay royalties,’ as SX’s press release states, in fact AccuRadio has been a consistently reliable SX licensee for the vast majority of the past 20+ years, having paid SX over $12,500,000 in royalties to date. SX’s implication that AccuRadio hasn’t paid royalties since 2018 is erroneous and fails to note that AccuRadio resumed full payments in early 2021 and continued until very recently.”
Hanson further notes that the high music streaming royalty rates are particularly challenging for smaller and independent webcasters like AccuRadio that don’t have deep pockets or multinational corporate parents. In conclusion, Hanson remarked, “At AccuRadio, we love the medium of online radio — with its ease of use, incredible variety, personalization features, and reasonable spot load – and we intend to continue to work with SX, either directly or via a judge, to enter into a fair and reasonable payment plan for past obligations and to resume current-period payments ASAP.”