On Wednesday we posted a report titled "The Foggy Fraud Problem Hidden within the Music Streaming Business Model," wherein we noted that "Spotify, Tidal and Rhapsody are all battling multi-million lawsuits alleging copyright issues and improper royalty payments. Yet running underground to all of that noise if the issue of 'Click Fraud.'" Late yesterday the New York Times reported that Spotify had reached a sweetheart deal with publishers in their licensing dispute.

According to the report, "Spotify will pay more than $20 million to music publishers to settle a long-running and complex dispute over licensing, according to an agreement announced on Thursday between the streaming service and the National Music Publishers' Association, a trade group. The settlement concerns mechanical licensing rights, which refer to a copyright holder's control over the ability to reproduce a musical work.

Jonathan Prince, a spokesman for Spotify, added, 'As we have said many times, we have always been committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny.'

Jeff Price, the chief executive of Audiam, a company that specializes in tracking down unpaid royalties online and has tussled with Spotify in the past over publishing data said that the low penalty in the National Music Publishers' Association settlement 'rewards bad behavior.'"

Our cover graphic from this week's earlier report was from Audiam. For more on this, see the full NYTimes report here.

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