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Eminem's publisher, Eight Mile Style, is suing Spotify.

It claims the music-streaming service failed to correctly license the rapper's work.

Eminem has never been properly paid for songs "streamed on Spotify billions of times", court papers say.

And Spotify, which has yet to respond publicly, put the song Lose Yourself into a category for copyrighted songs by unknown authors, which Eight Mile Style calls "absurd".

Lose Yourself, recorded and produced by Eminem and his long-time collaborators Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, was the first hip-hop song to win an Academy Award.

Eight Mile Style is suing for approximately £30m, the maximum damages for each of what it says are 243 copyright-infringed songs.

"Spotify acted deceptively by pretending to have compulsory and/or other licences," court papers claim.

The publisher further accuses Spotify of not complying with the 2018 Music Modernisation Act, a US regulation designed to pay songwriters when their music is streamed.

Under the regulations, the online streaming service must make "reasonable efforts" to identify and locate each copyright owner of work that might be categorised as unknown.

The court papers accuse the streaming service of lacking the infrastructure needed to make sure songs are licensed and musicians are paid.