(Hypebot) – Wolfgang's Vault bills itself as the "world's largest collection of live music." Sister site Daytrotter brings that same sensibility to merging music. But much of the music you find on these sites has not been properly licensed, according to the NMPA.
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) today filed a major copyright infringement lawsuit on behalf of several music publishers against “Wolfgang’s Vault,” which disseminates concert videos and audio recordings through its own ConcertVault.com, Daytrotter.com and MusicVault.com, as well as on YouTube.
"Wolfgang’s Vault calls itself the 'largest collection of live audio and video recordings online' and the 'world’s largest collection of live music,' and values just a portion of its music collection at over a $100 million," the NMPA said in a statement. "However. much of its content was never properly licensed. This lawsuit not only intends to stop these entities use of unlicensed works, but also to pay back those whose material has been exploited."
Wolfgang's Vault owned and related websites offer tens of thousands of hours of concert footage as on-demand streams, digital downloads, CDs, DVDs and vinyl recordings and attract approximately 50,000 visitors per day, according to the NMPA.
“The Wolfgang’s Vault websites have profited in large part because of the significant use of unlicensed music, primarily concert footage, available on their sites,” said David Israelite, President & CEO of NMPA. “Systematic copyright infringement cannot be a business model, and it is unfortunate that Wolfgang’s Vault chose not to compensate all of the creators responsible for their content."
