Spotify has taken down hundreds of albums and works of comedians due to disputes over royalties and copyrights. The work of big stars like John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, Tiffany Haddish, and Kevin Hart, among others, has been taken off.
The issue centres on a group of comedians who want to be paid a copyright fee for jokes they wrote that are broadcast on radio and distributed on digital platforms such as Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, and YouTube.
Spoken Giants, a worldwide rights administrator, is coordinating a group of comedians who want to collect royalties on their spoken-word work. The organisation intends to collect royalties for their spoken-word media’s underlying composition copyrights. They are referring to songwriters, who are compensated for the usage of their songs and words.
After failing to reach an agreement with Spoken Giants, the streaming service opted to take the comedians’ albums and work off the platform. The comics are now compensated as performers on a digital service by their label or distributor and SoundExchange, a digital performance rights organisation. They are not compensated as authors of the piece, as Spoken Giants refers to their literary rights.
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According to the article, the organisation sought out streaming platforms, satellite, and terrestrial radio in the spring. Spoken Giants has been in contact with a number of different services and radio stations. After many meetings with Spotify, they received an email on Thanksgiving Eve indicating that the company will delete works that they represent until the matter was resolved and an agreement was made.
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