Spotify has removed the work of hundreds of famous comics over royalties and copyright disputes.
Wave goodbye to Jim Gaffigan, Tiffany Haddish, Patton Oswalt, John Mulaney and a whole lot more of your favourite comedians.
As initially reported on by the Wall St Journal, a global rights administration company, Spoken Giants, has worked with a group of high-profile comedians to try and negotiate new payment terms for their streamed work.
On behalf of the comedian’s, Spoken Giants have aimed to collect royalties for “underlying composition copyrights of spoken-word media.”
In other words, on top of being paid by a label or distributor and a digital performance rights organisation for their performances, compensation for intellectual property is also being sought after.
Spoken Giants wants comedians to be paid for the writing of content much the same as how a songwriter would be.
However, not one for funny business, Spotify has swiftly deleted a mass of comedic content after negotiations with Spoken Giants broke down.
Spoken Giants tweeted, “@Spotify unilaterally decided to take the content down on the night before Thanksgiving when everyone was about to begin a four-day holiday. Just as we were all about to slip into a food coma.. #StandUpOnSpotify.”
Later again they said, “Hey @spotify the comedians at Spoken Giants want you back…but with fair compensation for their writing. #StandUpOnSpotify.”
However, a Spotify spokesperson responded stating that they’d already paid, “significant amounts of money for the content in question and would love to continue to do so.”
It’s unknown whether any of the comedian’s content will ever return or if Spotify will even try to reach an agreement with Spoken Giants.
The only certainty going forward is that Spotify will have nearly 400 million users by the years end which means that the comedians in question are missing out on a tremendous amount of visibility.
