代表英国音乐家和出版商的表演权利协会（Performing Rights Society for Music，简称PRS）起诉SoundCloud未能获得在其平台上播放PRS成员音乐的适当许可证。PRS今天上午宣布，采取法律行动的决定是在“五年谈判不成功”之后作出的

流许可证

该组织向组织发放音乐许可证，并将由此产生的版税分配给艺术家，坚持认为SoundCloud需要一个“PRS for music license”才能在英国合法播放成员的音乐。PRS声称，如果没有该许可证，SoundCloud不会对PRS成员的工作进行适当补偿。PRS在一份声明中说，它向SoundCloud发送了一份4500首侵犯其成员版权的歌曲的列表，SoundCloud只删除了其中的250首。PRS表示，SoundCloud可以获得使用这些歌曲付费的许可证，也可以完全删除这些歌曲。

目前尚不清楚PRS指的是艺术家自己上传的歌曲，还是未经授权的样本和上传。如果是前者，那么PRS和它的成员可能对SoundCloud上应该提供什么有矛盾的意见。PRS声称它正试图通过诉讼“确立一个原则”：

Our aim is always to license services when they use our members’ music. It has been a difficult decision to begin legal action against SoundCloud but one we firmly believe is in the best, long-term interests of our membership. This is because it is important we establish the principle that a licence [sic] is required when services make available music to users. We have asked SoundCloud numerous times to recognise [sic] their resp***ibilities to take a licence [sic] to stop the infringement of our members’ copyrights but so far our requests have not been met. Therefore we now have no choice but to pursue the issue through the courts.

到目前为止，SoundCloud的一年一直很艰难。在两家公司未能达成支付协议后，索尼于今年5月开始将旗下艺人撤出这项服务。SoundCloud最近在侵犯版权方面越来越激进，但这导致很多DJ（他们是SoundCloud最多产的用户之一）跳槽。

SoundCloud发言人告诉《边缘报》，SoundCloud和PRS仍在谈判中，PRS决定起诉：

It is regrettable that PRS appears to be following this course of action in the midst of an active commercial negotiation with SoundCloud. We believe this approach does not serve the best interests of any of the parties involved, in particular the members of the PRS, many of whom are active users of our platform and who rely on it to share their work and communicate with their fanbase.

更新时间：美国东部时间8月27日上午11:25：更新后添加了SoundCloud的评论。