Facebook, Instagram hit with massive music copyright lawsuit

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit demanding at least $142 million in damages.

Epidemic Sound, a company that provides flat-fee royalty-free music to creators on YouTube, TikTok, and other social platforms, claims that Meta hosts 94% of its 35,000 song catalog without licenses. This has allegedly resulted in billions of illegal views across Facebook and Instagram.

According to Epidemic, 50,000 infringing videos and 30,000 new uploads containing Epidemic’s music are added to Facebook and Instagram respectively every day.

The company also alleges that Meta’s own official Music Library designed for use by creators contains unauthorized tracks: “Epidemic knows of over 950 of its music tracks that have been reproduced, stored, made available to, and distributed to its users by Meta through its Music Library or through its other content sharing tools without a license. Epidemic is confident that further research would reveal additional infringements.”

“This action seeks to stop the theft of music created by hundreds of musicians, songwriters, producers and vocalists, theft occurring knowingly, intentionally and brazenly by Meta on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms on a daily basis,” states the complaint. “Defendant Meta is not merely aware of this infringement. It has actively infringed, as well as participated in, encouraged and enabled such infringement.”

Read the full complaint. (PDF via TorrentFreak)

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.