Spotify Dropped Comedy Albums From Stand-Ups Aligned With Spoken Giants Seeking Royalties

Thanksgiving bombshell roiled the comedy community

You know how every so often, you hear about a carriage dispute between a cable station or network and a cable company or satellite operator? In the days leading up to a deadline, you’ll see TV ads begging you to complain to your provider not to drop the stations? Yeah, well, none of that happened over Thanksgiving with regard to stand-up comedy albums on Spotify. Instead, many of your favorite comedians simply saw their albums and catalogs vanish from the streaming platform.

I mean, just try searching for your favorite comedian on Spotify right now.

What happened?

For their part, the streaming giant has remained fairly silent and corporately-vague about the matter. A Spotify spokesman replied to me via email today: "We want all the world’s audio to be available to Spotify users, but availability can vary over time and between countries, depending on the permissions from rights holders. We add new content to Spotify every day, so if you can’t find something you’re looking for right now, it may appear (or reappear) soon."

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UPDATED 5:55 p.m. EST 11/30/2021!

One of my sources sent me the following bulletin they received from Spotify…

Hi,

We regret to inform you that Spotify will be removing tracks from the Spoken Giants catalog worldwide.   

While we are taking this action out of abundance of caution given continued uncertainty regarding the licensing status of these works, our discussions with Spoken Giants continue and we hope the issue can be resolved soon.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Best Regards,

Spotify Content Protection

For a clearer answer, you have to look to a different giant. Spoken Giants. Co-founded by Ryan Bitzer and Damion Greiman from relative upstart label 800 Pound Gorilla Records along with former BMI executive Jim King, Spoken Giants emerged in 2019 in an effort “to protect the public performance, the copying, and synchronization of our members creative assets” in spoken word media. Perhaps this short video explainer will indeed explain their mission better.

The Spoken Giants membership includes comedians such as Mike Birbiglia, Lewis Black, Dan Cummins (who provided the voiceover in the video above), Pete Holmes, Kyle Kinane, Kathleen Madigan, Tom Segura and Theo Von, as well as the estates of Don Rickles and Ralphie May.

Some other really big names also saw their catalogs virtually wiped out on Spotify, including Dave Chappelle (only his “8:46” remains), Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan, John Mulaney and more. A few others, however, including Brian Regan and Louis CK, do seem to have most if not all of their albums available to stream still as of today. Of course, not all of these artists are necessarily aligned with Spoken Giants.

Birbiglia wondered aloud on Twitter on Saturday, thinking it might be related to Comedy Central.

Mike Birbiglia @birbigs

Random question: Does anyone know why some of the Comedy Central albums got taken off Spotify? 3 of mine are gone, some of Mulaney’s, one of Attell’s, but then some are still there— like Hedberg. Anyone know about any rights things happening behind the scenes with comedy albums?

There has been much to worry about over at Comedy Central since late 2019 in terms of their support toward stand-up comedians — and the network did recently announced a new licensing deal at the end of September with Comedy Dynamics to redistribute the Comedy Central Records library under new licensing. But no. That’s not what made them go bye-bye on Spotify.

The new licensing deal with Comedy Dynamics should result in many Comedy Central Records albums experiencing perhaps a tiny blip this week before reappearing on all major platforms — including Spotify — but that’s a separate issue and not part of the argument over royalties.

Spoken Giants CEO King sent out an email to members on Nov. 27, here copied-and-pasted by comedian Gianmarco Soresi to share on Twitter:

gianmarco @GianmarcoSoresi

Hey @Spotify, a lot of us like listening to comedy without having to look at the faces that made them go into comedy in the first place. Please fix!

King emailed me today with the following update:

Hi Sean.  We have been acting in good faith in our efforts with all platforms and it is a journey working to get DSPs and terrestrial radio to realize that copyright law applies to the creation of ]spoken word and not just music.  We believe the platforms recognize this and we have positive interactions.  I cannot comment on our engagement with Spotify other than to say finding out this was happening over a family holiday at a time when business cannot respond (Thanksgiving) seems like a pretty purposeful move.  We will be updating our members and have potentially wider market updates soon - as we work with our team to sort through this.

Spoken Giants did make some noise on this issue back in February, as reported by Deadline. That’s when the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) reached a $424 million agreement with Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Google and other digital streaming providers on royalty payouts to musicians.

“As a multiple rights organization, we’re in line with what the MLC does for songwriters … and those representing them and we look forward to the future when Spoken Giants and MLC are working hand-in-hand to serve our respective members. For now, the question remains, when and how will authors of spoken word content receive appropriate compensation? Comedy, podcasts, speeches, and audiobooks are being consumed online at consistently high rates but those creators have historically been without an advocate, until now.”

Comedians already do and still receive payments on the rebroadcast of their performances via SoundExchange.

What Spoken Giants seeks from Spotify is payment on the writing. Much like musicians receive separate payouts for the music versus the lyrics.

If you want to get more in the weeds on this, here’s a flow-chart from Spoken Giants.

Of course, as any musician gladly will tell you, the amount of money they receive from Spotify or Pandora or Apple or practically anything else from streaming (save for SiriusXM, notably), that amounts to a pittance unless their music streams in the millions and billions. So even a successful claim for copyright royalties might not result in a continuing windfall for many comedians.

Dan Schlissel, president of Stand Up! Records, didn’t feel too optimistic about it this week, telling me: “Remains to be seen, but if Spotify is wholesale getting rid of comedy, it’s not a great sign for anyone.”

I’ll have more on this story as it develops.