Anonymous Spotify sources have been pitching the NMPA publisher settlement as a silver bullet that will “crush” the songwriter class action lawsuits. Here is the latest such headline…

How Spotify Crushed a $200 Million Songwriter Lawsuit…

In this Digital Music News article David Israelite from the National Music Publishers Association seems to go out of his way to come up with a highly qualified 96% figure.  That of course makes it seem like there are just a few songwriters left in the spotify class action lawsuit.

Wrong.

This doesn’t do anything to the class action. The class action is about UNLICENSED SONGS not UNMATCHED ROYALTIES. Further songs represented by NMPA publishers were never really the main issue here. Why? In most cases the NMPA publishers were licensed via modified compulsory by NMPA owned Harry Fox Agency.

The unlicensed songs most likely belong to publishers and songwriters outside the NMPA umbrella.

However if you are Spotify or Goldman Sachs and you need to convince investors that the problem is cleared up before an IPO?  This headline works! 

Let the securities fraud begin!

Time and time again the NMPA has helped Spotify by creating the false impression that the putative class has been gutted and that Spotify’s long term infringement problems have been fixed. This in no way helps the NMPA or its publishers. Further it tells digital services that NMPA will save their asses even if they stiff songwriters. 

With friends like these who needs enemies.