Spotify Yanks Several Comedians’ Albums After Impasse Over Royalties

Multiple comedians now have way less comedy albums on Spotify than they did last month — all because the streaming giant doesn’t wanna fork over extra royalties they’re asking for.

Spotify yanked several albums from dozens of high-profile comedians — including folks like Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, Tiffany Haddish, among many others — just before Thanksgiving, and did so because they’d reached an impasse over this issue … this according to the WSJ.

The problem … apparently, a ton of these comics have teamed up with an org called Spoken Giants — which has been reaching out to companies like Spotify, YouTube, SiriusXM, Pandora and others to demand they pay an additional chunk of change for a comedians’ written joke.

Basically, most comics only get paid as performers by their labels and/or distributors … as opposed to being able to double dip as composers/writers of the works as well, like songwriters do. That’s what Spoken Giants is fighting for — but Spotify won’t play ball.

Unclear how many albums they’ve taken down in total, but it looks like it’s quite a bit — because the above-mentioned comics’ Spotify pages look pretty bare, especially TH … who doesn’t have a single comedy album on her profile anymore … only one-off singles.

The criteria for which albums stay and which don’t isn’t exactly laid out either — but in any case, SG is pissed on behalf of the comedians (none of whom appear to have personally spoken out about this, BTW) … telling WSJ, Spotify hurt their bottom line with the move.