From The Comic's Comic

Ron White, Bill Engvall, Andrew “Dice” Clay join estates of George Carlin, Robin Williams in suing the music streamer owned by SiriusXM

BREAKING…

The Estate of Robin Williams, Estate of George Carlin, Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Andrew “Dice” Clay — all clients of Word Collections — filed separate lawsuits today against Pandora Media LLC, the subscription-based streaming service based in Oakland, Calif., and owned by SiriusXM since 2019.

They’re all represented by attorney Richard S. Busch of Los Angeles law firm King & Ballow, demanding jury trials through United States District Court in the Central District of California.

Each of the suits carries similar language, arguing in the case of Main Sequence Ltd. (for Carlin’s estate):

“Pandora not only did not obtain any copyright in Carlin’s Works but admitted it did not do so in Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and admitted that it would likely face copyright infringement liability as a result. But Pandora did what most goliaths do: it decided it would infringe now to ensure it had this very valuable intellectual property on its platform to remain competitive and deal with the consequences later. Later is now.”

The five plaintiffs are Main Sequence Ltd. (for Carlin), Robin Williams Trust, Brave Lion Inc. (for Andrew Clay Silverstein), Ron White Inc., and Yellow Rose Productions (Engvall).

This is the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute among comedians against streaming platforms (Pandora, Spotify, et. al.) for not paying the artists royalties for carrying and distributing and profiting off of their work.

Back on Thanksgiving, Spotify dropped multiple comedians from its platform in response to demands for payouts from comedians represented by Spoken Giants.

Piffany

Spotify Dropped Comedy Albums From Stand-Ups Aligned With Spoken Giants Seeking Royalties

You know how every so often, you hear about a carriage dispute between a cable station or network and a cable company or satellite operator? In the days leading up to a deadline, you’ll see TV ads begging you to complain to your provider not to drop the stations? Yeah, well, none of that happened over Thanksgiving with regard to stand-up comedy albums o…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · Sean L. McCarthy

Those comedians remain deplatformed by Spotify today. A notable exception? Lewis Black.

Black asked Spotify to remove his catalog on Dec. 10, and nearly two months later, it’s all still there for listeners.

It’s almost as if these streaming platforms don’t actually care about comedians, doesn’t it?

I’ll update this post as warranted.