WebLists
WebListen is a Spanish online music service founded in 1996 and closed in May 2005. In particular, its customer-friendly price models and the fact that all songs are offered without copy protection ( DRM ) made WebListen very popular, even with former exchange traders.
There are also different opinions in Germany about the legality of the offer. WebListen has signed a license agreement with the Spanish collecting society of publishers SGAE ( Sociedad General de Autores y Editores ) . The billing model of the contract is comparable to the principle of the German radio stations . The radio stations do not pay the rights holder directly, but flat-rate fees through GEMA . This license model enables the provider not only to have uniform prices, but also to have a complete catalog across all record labels.
In the opinion of the German phono associations, the offer is illegal in Germany. The music portal would not have acquired any online distribution rights for Germany.
In Spain, there are court rulings against WebListen, which resulted in the website being closed in May 2005. There are no German court rulings on cases of this kind yet, so it is not yet possible to say exactly how the situation should be interpreted. If the offer is not obviously illegal, the use of the music portal would not be punishable under German copyright law.