Since we are too busy laughing, comedians write content to entertain us. There is a difference between royalties for written work and those for comedians. The popularity of their content on digital platforms has comedians hoping to change that. They just ran into a wall.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the work of hundreds of comedians, including John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, and Kevin Hart, was taken down by the service. The comedians are represented by Spoken Giants, a global rights company that is leading the fight to get radio and digital platforms to pay royalties to comedians for their written work.
The streaming giant was in talks with Giants but couldn't reach an agreement. The comedians represented by the organization would be pulled until they could come to an understanding.
Jim King, the CEO of Spoken Giants, told Gizmodo in a statement that the company has a clear process for engaging with digital service providers, digital platforms, and radio to discuss compensation for comedy writers. He said that the work of individual comedians was removed by Spotify.
King said that the work is based on established precedents and clear copyright language and that it is not an unfamiliar concept. Individual comedians are now being punished for requesting the same compensation songwriters receive.
King said that Spoken Giants reached out to Spotify after it removed its members work. He said that the company had requested a meeting with the streaming service.
The fight to pay comedy writers for their work seems to have come out of the blue, because for a long time there wasn't a lot of money to collect. Comedy wasn't usually played on radio. That has changed with the advent of digital platforms. Comedy is being played a lot on these platforms.
A company spokesman told Gizmodo that Spoken Giants is in dispute with the rights of various licensors, after pointing out that the company paid a significant amount of money for the content it took down. Comedians are paid by their label or distributor. When their work is played on a digital platform, they are paid digital performance royalties by SoundExchange.
The company said that it had paid a lot of money for the content. It is imperative that the labels that distribute this content, as well as Spoken Giants, come together to resolve this issue to ensure that this content remains available to fans around the globe.
The Journal pointed out that the royalty payments Spoken Giants and other rights organizations are clamoring for will come from. The deals were closed by the company because it thought it had covered all the royalties that needed to be paid. The writing needs to be paid a royalty. Some of the money it pays labels and distributors could be used to pay comedy writers, or it could be used to pay royalties on written work.
I think a bigger price tag will be hard to sell.
