Songkick.com users claim tracking despite cookie rejection

Songkick.com, a concert discovery service, collected users’ cookies without consent and sold that data to third parties.(CN) — One of the world’s largest concert discovery platforms, Songkick.com, faces an Illinois cookie class action with users claiming the site tracked and sold user data without consent.The platform was founded in 2008 and is used by more than 155 million fans to track artists, discover concerts and buy tickets, according to the site.Warner Music Group — the third largest music corporation in the world and home to artists like PinkPantheress, Sombr and Madonna — acquired the platform in 2017. It sold to Suno, an AI music generator, in November 2025.Zoe Barker and Charissa Baron represent a class of users who opted to reject all cookies when prompted by the website only to find later the platform not only retained their data but also sold it to third party advertisers.In their class action, filed Tuesday, the plaintiffs claim Songkick.com collected information about which artists, events, concerts and dates users searched for together with unique identifiers and the user’s IP address.“This is not merely a failure to obtain consent,” the plaintiffs say in the 43-page complaint. “Defendants solicited their users’ consent, received an express refusal, and tracked them anyway, overriding the very choice defendants themselves offered.”The class period spans from the acquisition of Songkick.com by Warner Music Group to the present under Suno. The class includes all United States residents who rejected cookies and were tracked anyway.It also includes an Illinois subclass for Illinois residents who rejected cookies on the website.The class brings its claims under the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which forbids the surreptitious interception of private electronic communications without the consent of all parties, and the Federal Wiretap Act.Songkick.com intentionally committed criminal and tortious acts, according to the class, that goes beyond interception.By sharing the cookie data with third party advertisers, the platform commercially exploited users in defiance of their express refusal of consent.“Each interception, disclosure and use was intentional. Defendants’ conduct was not the product of an accident or mistake: the tracking fired on every page, for every user, including the users whose ‘reject all’ selections defendants’ own consent-management platform had just recorded,” the plaintiffs say.They claim the website presented them with a cookie consent banner, requesting permission for Songkick.com and its 953 partners to store and access personal information on the user device to provide a personalized browsing experience.Barker used the site to look for concerts in the Chicago area, while Baron focused on shows in Denver and San Diego, where she planned to vacation. Both say they rejected all cookies, which the website ignored.The Federal Trade Commission defines website cookies as pieces of information saved by your web browser that allow websites to remember you from your last visit and keep track of you over time. They’re used to track your preferences to deliver targeted advertisements, save an online shopping cart or remember your login information.By rejecting cookies on the site, the class members say they expected their keystrokes to be private.Third-party tracking technologies embedded on the website by organizations such as Yahoo, Amazon and Google are eavesdropping devices, according to the class, which Songkick.com and its owners are liable for.“Defendants knowingly employed the third party tracking companies and their eavesdropping devices on the website; knowingly derived benefits and information from the illegal use of those devises, including advertising revenue, analytics, audience data and enhanced commercial relationships with their advertising partners,” the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.In this case, Songkick.com learned the user’s tastes, plans, anticipated whereabouts, travel intentions and interests. When a user notes interest in a social and economic justice festival, their political and social commitments could be inferred and they could be tracked via the site cookies to that event.The plaintiffs want a Dupage County Circuit Court judge to issue an injunction ending the post-rejection tracking and order deletion of the data it produced.The class is represented by Nicholas Lange and Jonathan Jagher of Justice Jagher in Lincolnshire, Illinois.The parties could not be reached for comment by press time.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads