Although music streaming services have certainly been growing in popularity, recent studies have shown that a lot of people just don’t see the point in paying for them. With this type of attitude being so prevalent, Spotify is going to have a tough time time growing its business, and that’s without multiple clones popping up that offer all the music a person could want to hear for the low price of absolutely nothing.
And thanks to a script by the name of Youtubify, that’s exactly what’s happening. This script lets anyone who can afford the $40 price tag build their own Spotify clone, right down to the look and feel of the site. The only difference is where the music comes from — as the name implies, Youtubify pulls its music from YouTube.
Since Youtubify first hit the Web, multiple Spotify clones have appeared and disappeared, but Spotify hasn’t publicly done anything about them. Now that has changed, as the company’s legal team has contacted one particularly blatant clone by the name of Syotify, TorrentFreak reports.
“Spotify has recently discovered that some of the things that you do violate Spotify’s intellectual property and other rights,” the company told the operators of Syotify. “Spotify is all for you making a living and running a business, but when that business interferes with Spotify’s rights, we hope you understand that Spotify can’t just sit back and take no action.”
The Spotify legal team provided the operators of Syotify with a list of demands that includes ceasing use of the “infringing domain name,” providing a list of other related domain names, permanently stopping use of Spotify trademarks, and transferring the offending domain names to Spotify.
While Spotify’s main issue with Syotify seems to be just how similar its name is, the company also says that its use of the Spotify API to create YouTube playlists is in violation of its user agreement. This means that other sites using Youtubify and even the script’s creators could be next in line on the Spotify legal team’s contact list.
