What The Media Has Missed On The Story About Spotify and Spoken Giants
Reporting: Still requires more than copying and pasting
What’s new, Spotify listeners?
What’s that, you say? You’re confused by my question? Of course you are. The ongoing spat between Spotify and a collective known as Spoken Giants is so messy and convoluted, I’m not surprised that the media — mainstream, tabloid and assorted online operations — have mostly missed the actual story. I mean, why investigate the matter when you can just wait for a big media outlet such as Billboard or The Wall Street Journal to regurgitate the talking points of the two sides, so then you can just copy, paste and boil those points down to even smaller bullets of clickbait to send around social media?
Perhaps the current journalism landscape doesn’t afford reporters the opportunity to do even the slightest bit of original digging, because their editors demand them to keep feeding the gluttonous content machine. I don’t know. I cannot speak for them.
Perhaps the situation is too fluid to offer a snapshot? Let’s try to offer one now.
See that screengrab up top? That’s from my own Spotify search of famous, Grammy-nominated stand-up comedian Lewis Black. Black is cited as a client of Spoken Giants, who recently asked Spotify to pay up additional royalties for the publishing copyrights of comedians and spoken-word voiceover artists. To which Spotify said, um, how about no. Spotify pulled the plug on a bunch of comedy albums linked to Spoken Giants on Thanksgiving. What turkeys! I wrote about it with comments from both sides on Nov. 30, a day before Billboard, and a few days before WSJ.
At the time, Black still had one album on Spotify, his 2020 Grammy-nominated album off of Laugh Button Records, “Thanks For Risking Your Life.” When I checked again last night at midnight Eastern, Spotify had a second Black album back up.
And now, most of the catalog is back. As of about 12 hours ago, another Spoken Giants client, Patton Oswalt, had much of his catalog on Spotify, too! How bizarre, how bizarre.
Kevin Hart’s audio comedy catalog? Not as bountiful at the moment.
Jim Gaffigan? Not a problem!
John Mulaney? A few days ago, only the audio version of his Netflix Sack Lunch Bunch special was on Spotify, but overnight, his debut stand-up album was back on the platform.
Some other Spoken Giants clients, such as Tom Segura, Kyle Kinane, and Roy Wood Jr., have nothing to show for their work on Spotify right now.
Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin — whom I shouted out Friday as my “Employees of the Month” for November — both have their new release albums on Spotify. Kilmartin’s back catalog is up, but for whatever reason, Kashian’s is missing.
It’d be easier to figure out if Spotify had merely singled out the performers aligned with Spoken Giants — as outlined in a press release last month that appeared in Pollstar:
Spoken Giants – the first royalty administration company for spoken-word including comics, podcasters, lecturers and speakers – has announced new signings including Tom Segura, Tiffany Haddish, Jeff Foxworthy, Patton Oswalt, Bob Newhart, Jo Koy, Roy Wood, Jr., Christopher Titus, Lisa Lampanelli and Paula Poundstone. With Robert Dubac, Ian Bagg, John Heffron, Maz Jobrani, Alycia Cooper as well as the estates of Tim Wilson and John Pinette also on board, the Nashville-based company now represents a significant percentage of the comedy market.
And yet, that’s not entirely the case?!? Heffron and Koy found their pages wiped virtually clean. Poundstone had only her latest release up, while Haddish had only her musical performances on Spotify.
What gives?
Could be some wheeling-and-dealing negotiating happening on an comedian-by-comedian level, or more likely thanks to agents and managers working overtime, or even most likely, thanks to a new licensing deal between Comedy Central Records and Comedy Dynamics, which went into effect last week. Some albums may have blipped off Spotify as the licensing changed hands from Warner Bros. to Comedy Dynamics, before snapping back from the blip. But that doesn’t explain why there are inconsistencies, does it?
Nor does it take into account all of the comedians who are aligned with Word Collections, another company formed in recent years to seek out spoken-word royalties, who haven’t been impacted at all by the Spotify spat.
Why are we so focused on Spotify, anyhow? What about Pandora or Apple Music or Amazon Music any of the other places comedy fans might be streaming their favorite comedians…don’t they need to pay out, too? Obviously, your anecdotal evidence may have turned up just what mine has this past week — thanks to Spotify’s annual Spotify Wrapped feature — that they have the dominant streaming music platform by a wide margin. All of your friends are listening via Spotify right now.
Even so, other big questions remain…
What are the artists and their collectives fighting over, exactly? Is there even a clear and separate copyright to be made for comedians for their literary rights? In addition to their performance rights? It’s not as if comedians are out there performing and recording covers.
What are the payouts for other spoken-word artists looking like? Take audiobooks, for example. If the author has someone else narrated their book, who’s getting the money, and how much? The book publisher? The voiceover artist? The author?
And even if there is something new or previously overlooked to be claimed, how much are we talking about here? What is it worth to the artists? What would Spotify or other streaming platforms be on the hook for in terms of payouts?
Most streaming platforms are paying out less than a penny per stream to performers as it is. See this chart from Producer Hive, for starters:
Kinane offered a look into how this currently was working out, or not, for him.
Just yesterday, the Instagram account @perfectunion posted in solidarity with The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (@weareumaw), asking Spotify to at least increase payouts to a penny-per-stream. “In 2021 Spotify paid artists an average of $0.0038 per stream. It takes 786 streams just for an artist to afford a single cup of coffee. It takes 625,000 streams per month for an artist to earn a livable wage. 82% of musicians earn less than $270 a year from Spotify.”
For its part, Spotify already has set up its own website, Loud and Clear, in an effort to get out their side of the story. In their defense of low payouts:
“Spotify primarily makes money for music from two sources — from Spotify Premium subscribers as well as from advertisers on Spotify’s free tier. Roughly ⅔ of this money is paid out to music rights holders. In 2020 alone, that number — what we refer to as the ‘royalty pool’ — was over $5 billion from Spotify alone. Spotify divvies up that royalty pool based on each rights holder’s streamshare on Spotify. This money is not divvied up based on a fixed amount per stream, because Premium subscribers do not pay per stream; they pay a subscription fee for access.”
Jessica Mozes, who works for Blonde Medicine Records, offered her own take on the matter yesterday, writing:
There’s been a lot of chatter this week that Spotify and other Digital Streaming Providers (DSPs) do not pay anything for the stand up comedy content they play on their platforms. I’m not usually a defender of DSPs but I gotta say, this is not true.
Performance Royalties are paid out to the Master Rights Owner, typically a record label, and depending on the nature of the agreement between the label and the comedian, the label distributes the Artist’s share from there.
If you are a comic with a record deal who is not getting regular payments of digital distribution royalties, here are a few potential reasons...
(non-exhaustive list)
a) You are still in recoupment for production costs. Not all labels recoup, but those that do likely keep your Artist share until the bill is paid off.
b) You have not reached the payment threshold. This would be stated in your agreement, but sometimes a label has a policy that they hold off on cutting a check until you reach a certain amount, say, $50. So, your cumulative earnings may still be below the threshold.
c) Your label is fucking you and not paying out the Performance Royalties you are owed. This is inexcusable, but the finger should not be pointed at the DSPs.
Now, you may be saying, "where’s my Publishing money?! I want that same cut song writers get for my joke writing!" And to that I say, while I'm not a lawyer, I’ve had a really hard time finding a solid basis in copyright law. And, it’s never been done before for comedy, so of course there’s going to be some bumps before the revenue stream is worked out (if there is a defensible entitlement for publishing protections in copyright law).
Many have invoked Literary Works as the basis for copyright protection and royalties. Here is how the US Copyright Office outlines Literary works. “Comedy Routines / Stand Up Routines” as well as “Spoken Word Recordings” and “Podcasts” are all listed under Performing Arts.
And again, the royalties associated with the Performance Rights ARE currently and correctly flowing just fine from DSPs to labels.
If you’re mad about the amount per stream, that’s a different issue. And I’ll encourage you to consider this explainer video from Spotify as it provides a good overview of how the money flows.
I agree that artists deserve more for the exploitation of their content on streaming services, and it can be disheartening to see thousands of spins yield a few dollars, but that’s a separate issue from collecting Publishing Royalties.
I get that this stuff is kinda nerdy, sorta complicated and potentially boring. And it is cathartic to say fuck Spotify, but the truth is, they always pull down tracks when there’s a claim that needs to be worked out. This is not a punitive retaliation against comedians. However, there is a negative impact in that now, having raised a claim for (questionable) Publishing Royalties, those tracks can’t be spun by fans and generate Performance Royalties.
And remember, while comedians are getting antsy over this standoff between Spoken Giants and Spotify, it’s not even the only thing artists have to worry about.
On Dec. 2 — yes, this same week — a guy named Benn Jordan posted a video about a former New York Times journalist named Ian Urbina, alleging he was running a Spotify scam on hundreds of musicians!
Urbina responded Saturday through a statement by Synesthesia Media, claiming that video was inaccurate.
Of course, if you look into those FAQs of Urbina’s “The Outlaw Ocean Music Project,” you’ll see in the small print…
How is revenue from the music divided?
After expenses (EMPHASIS ADDED BY ME BECAUSE hello, expenses!), 50 percent of revenue made on the music goes to the musician. The remaining portion goes to Synesthesia, which uses its share to continue supporting the music outreach by helping to cover the up-front expenses of future releases. In addition, we hope that Synesthesia will reach a point where it generates surplus revenue that will be directed (entirely) into the non-profit organization to support the journalism financially.
It turns out that whatever these musicians thought they were doing when they signed up with Urbina’s “record label,” they were, in fact, merely signing over their streaming rights as a “donation” to his “non-profit.”
Which is about funding his journalism. Which, OK. I’m on Substack asking you to donate to me for my journalism, too.
But this whole thing is just another reminder for artists and fans alike: READ THE SMALL PRINT!
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