I just heard about this…
…a few hundred comedians…had their albums taken down by Spotify the night before Thanksgiving, according to Spoken Giants, a publishing-rights company that represents the likes of Mike Birbiglia, Tiffany Haddish, Lewis Black, Jeff Foxworthy, the Bob Hope and Lucille Ball estates, and many other comics you know and love.
The dispute between Spoken Giants and Spotify dates back a few months, when the former company approached all the streaming services, as well as SiriusXM and terrestrial-radio outlets, to point out that comedians deserve royalties on their written work, not just the audio of their performances. Spoken Giants — which represents people who perform spoken-word entertainment, including podcasters and poets — is asking that its clients be compensated in the same method as the music world.
You can guess where I stand on this battle.