Spoken Giants, which represents a number of affected comedians, describes itself as “the first global rights management company for owners and creators of speech copyright” and aims to obtain streaming platform to pay comedians to write jokes the same way music writers do. pay.
The group told CNN the takedown happened on November 24, and said it never requested the content be taken down.
“Unfortunately, Spotify has removed the work of individual comedians rather than continue to negotiate,” CEO Jim King told CNN.
“With this demotion, individual comedians are now being fined for collectively demanding that musicians receive equal compensation,” he added. “After Spotify removed members’ work, we reached out but have not received a response. We have now requested an immediate meeting to resolve the situation.”
A Spotify spokesperson told CNN that the streaming platform has paid “significant amounts of money” to provide comedy content to listeners and is “very keen to continue to do so.”
“However, because Spoken Giants is disputing the rights that different licensors have, the labels that distribute this content, Spotify, and Spoken Giants must work together to resolve this issue in order to secure this content. remains available to fans globally,” the spokesperson said.
While the content is still available on other platforms including Pandora and Sirius, Spoken Giants said comedians with lower profiles and revenue could lose Spotify as a platform.
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