The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has increased its efforts to get Google to remove music download apps from Google Play.
Over the past month, the RIAA has reportedly sent dozens of takedown notices to Google asking the company to remove problematic apps from the Play Store including a popular “Video and Music Downloader” app which has been downloaded from the store more than 5 million times.
According to TorrentFreak, before August of this year the Lumen database, where Google publishes takedown notices, had just a few requests from the RIAA, now there are more than 60.
All of the notices target music-related apps, many of which offer “free music” and the ability to download music and videos from social media sites.
Some of the apps also tout themselves as ‘tube’ download tools; however, they carefully avoid the term YouTube in their Google Play descriptions (although some do mention YouTube on their websites).
Beyond the app “Video and Music Downloader,” which has 78,000 reviews to go along with its over 5 million downloads, most of the apps only have a few hundred downloads.
Despite the RIAA’s robust number of requests, it doesn’t look like the group will get its way in most cases. In total, the RIAA has made 68 requests since mid-August only 30 of the apps were removed after review.
