Spotify Cuts Ties With Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan & More Comedians

Spotify has taken down content from comedy giants like Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan and many others as a part of a recent royalty dispute.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this dispute is centered around a number of comedians who are now demanding to be paid royalties for the jokes that are written by them. These comedians want a copyright royalty from radio and digital service providers whenever one of these jokes are played on their platforms and this initiative is led by global rights administrator – Spoken Giants.

The report reveals that although the comedians are paid as performers on a digital service, they do not receive payments as the writers of their original works which is being called their “literary rights” by Spoken Giants. This caused an issue with their payment source in a big way.

After reaching out to multiple digital streaming services, a round of negotiations started between Spoken Giants and Spotify. However, since an agreement was not reached, the content in question was taken down by Spotify.

It looks like until the two parties reached a middle ground, content by the aforementioned comedy giants will not be reuploaded to Spotify.

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