According to the Wall Street Journal, a dispute over royalties and copyright has led to the removal of hundreds of comedians' content from the audio streaming service.
Kevin Hart is speaking at CinemaCon as Universal, the official convention of the National. The CinemaCon was held at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami.
Getty.
The comedians are working with a global rights administration company to negotiate royalty payments for their jokes to be used on streaming services.
The content would be taken down the day before Thanksgiving, according to the company.
Comedians don't receive royalties for having written jokes like songwriters do for their songs when their recordings are played on streaming services.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has paid a lot of money for comedy content and wants to keep doing it.
According to its website, Spoken Giants is the first global rights administration company for spoken word, and represents comedians, writers and speakers. The company collected over $100,000 in royalties on behalf of its initial members, including comedians Lewis Black and Dan Cummins.
There is a structure called the Tangent.
There are disagreements over royalties in the music industry. In March, over 300 writers wrote an open letter demanding that artists stop using bully tactics and threats to steal their royalties for writing top songs. Artists like Taylor Swift are trying to get a bigger share of the royalties from their music by releasing new versions of their songs. The masters of some of Swift's albums are owned by a private equity firm.
The Washington Post reported that some comedians' work was removed from the streaming service.
Taylor Swift is releasing her old albums again.
