XM Radio Faces Challenge from Record Labels

XM Radio has been accused of “massive wholesale infringement of copyright sound recordings” belonging to music labels. The lawsuit was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)which seeks to stop all of XM’s broadcast operations along with a fine of US$150,000 for damages. The association includes Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI, among others. XM is a radio station that allows its subscribers to listen to songs through it’s satellite radio broadcast and also record them as MP3 files on a device called the Inno Recorder, by Pioneer. Now, this poses a major threat to online music stores such as Apple’s iTunes, because XM has started marketing the Inno, a small 1GB ecorder/player as an alternative to the iPod. While XM has defended it’s operations, if the RIAA wins the lawsuit, then XM’s subscribers will have to pay a lot more and access fewer songs for recordings.