Spotify pulls best standup artists from its catalog over royalty dispute

The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify has removed hundreds of stand-up comedians' recordings after Spoken Giants and the rights management company stalled on a royalty deal. The missing recordings belong to such stars as Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish and John Mulaney.

As in previous disputes with songwriters, this new fight revolves around compensation for more than just performance. Spoken Giants wants its artists to get royalties not just for time spent at the microphone, but also as joke writers. The rights company began talks with the online service in the spring, but it emerged shortly before U.S. Thanksgiving that Spotify would withdraw the comedians' work until an agreement could be reached.

Spotify has also said that it pays a "significant" amount of money for comedy material and would "gladly" continue to do so, and that distributors and labels also have a say in the payments. Some comedian material remains on Spotify as of now, but much more is available through competing services like Apple Music.

If Spotify were to start paying royalties, the service would either have to pay more overall or reduce some of its existing share of distributors and labels. Both could negatively impact Spotify's bottom line, and the company doesn't have much room for maneuver as it is -- average revenue per listener last quarter was about $4.91.

At the same time, the royalty dispute and record deletions come at a particularly sensitive time. Since live standup is still a long way from the scale it was before the pandemic, some comedians depend quite heavily on digital releases. They are clearly looking to increase that income and could feel pretty bad financially if they lose support from Spotify.

Source: gizmodo