Copyright Confusion

[dharvell]

I am a musician who is a member of BMI with 4 self-released, full-length Industrial/EBM CDs to my credit. Over the decade of writing music, I've never had this happen, so I have no idea where to start.

The problem started when I decided to create a profile at last.fm to help promote my music. My most popular album to date is my 2003 release, "Purity". So, I figured that would be a good first album to upload to the last.fm profile. Upon uploading the album, I received an error saying that I could not create the album as this album has already been registered by a different LABEL.

A little research revealed that an Industrial music label called Metropolis Records did, indeed, register my album under their label. I have NEVER been signed to the Metropolis Records roster, so understand my confusion when I noticed this!

What gets me is that my album is labeled as ©Metropolis Records.

As I've never been in this situation, I don't even know where to start, what I can do, how to do it, etc. I am hoping for a little guidance to help point me to a good first step to getting this resolved and my album back to my ownership.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you need more information, please let me know and I will provide anything you need to know.

Best regards.

+dharvell

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Hire a lawyer - this one is too complicated and it appears you've already brought this to the attention of last.fm. Have you ever contacted Metropolis Records? Did you see whether they listed you elsewhere and exploited your music? Do we even know that Metropolis registered your band and album under their name or could someone else have done this? What homework have you done to ascertain potential damages?

All of the above is the key as to whether it makes sense to sue Metropolis - their degree of culpability (wrongdoing) and the potential damages they may have caused. If both can be answered to a reasonably high degree, then you might be talking about bringing a suit.

 

[Metropolis]

Hi there, I know this is, at this point, an ancient issue, but we just came acros this. the problem is/was with Last.Fm and their scrobbling, is there any way to have the original person contact us if this is still an issue? info@metropolis-records.com