Ministry of Sound are suing Spotify for copyright infringement, claiming that the streaming giants have refused to delete playlists made by their users that mimic MoS’s compilation albums.

Ministry is best known as a South London nightclub, but it’s also a record label that churns out compilations at a rate of knots – recent efforts have included Addicted to Bass 2013 and Anthems Electronic 80s 3. 

Several of these compilations, according to Ministry, have been replicated by Spotify users – sometimes with ‘Ministry of Sound’ in the title – effectively giving users of the program free license to listen to them without Ministry seeing payment. Ministry’s chief executive Lohan Presencer claims that his company has been requesting the removal of the playlists since 2012, but “there has been a brick wall from Spotify” in response [via The Guardian].

Ministry have now released a statement on the suit, which reads as follows:

The action has been brought on Spotify because it is making available playlists (compiled by users of its service) that copy well known Ministry of Sound compilations. Concerns were first raised last year when Ministry of Sound became aware of the inclusion of these playlists. The company notified Spotify and asked that they be removed, but the music streaming service has repeatedly refused to take any action.

The heart of Ministry of Sound’s recordings business is the painstaking curation of compilation albums. The company contends that the law protects the expertise and creative effort involved in creating compilation albums that have helped millions of music fans worldwide discover new genres, recordings and catalogues.

In its claim, Ministry of Sound seeks a declaration that Spotify has infringed the copyright in it compilations, an injunction requiring Spotify to remove the playlists in question and to permanently exclude from the Spotify service all playlists which are copies of Ministry of Sound compilations. The company is also seeking damages and costs.

Lohan Presencer, CEO of Ministry of Sound Group, says: “After several rounds of legal letters, this dispute will now be settled in court. We believe we have a clear cut case. After 20 years and more than 50 million album sales, the value and creativity in our compilations are self-evident. We aim to ensure that our creativity is protected and respected.”

It’s been a tough few months for Spotify: in July, Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich’s Atoms for Peace pulled their catalogue from the service, with Godrich claiming that the program was “It’s bad for new music. New artists get paid fuck all with this model…It’s an equation that just doesn’t work. The music industry is being taken over by the back door, and if we don’t try and make it fair for new music producers and artists then the art will suffer…These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system.”