Passover/Good Friday crucifixion of streaming stand-up escalates fight over royalty payouts
Spotify’s landing page for comedy seems robust. Seems being the operative word this weekend, as overnight, as Good Friday and Passover led to a virtual bloodbath for streaming stand-up content on the platform, primarily targeting independent comedy record labels.
The page as of this moment serves up dead links for the albums listed and highlighted by Adam Ray, Nore Davis, Andy Kindler, D.C. Benny, Eliza Skinner, Myq Kaplan, and Andy Daly.
All of Kill Rock Stars comedy offerings. Almost all of Helium’s. A Special Thing Records apparently sent an email blast to its clients this morning alerting them to the wipe-out.
It’s the latest salvo from Spotify in an ongoing spat with Spoken Giants, Word Collections and others over paying comedians royalties for the writing of their material — in music, royalties are paid separately for broadcasting/distributing songs, with some of the money going to the performers, and some going to the songwriters.
I broke the news on this back over Thanksgiving weekend.
Since AST Records gave its comedians a heads-up, they’ve naturally been among the first to start up a Tweetstorm about it; River Butcher, Eliza Skinner and Dan Telfer among them.
The Kill Rock Stars comedy offerings include stand-up albums from Cameron Esposito, Hari Kondabolu, River Butcher, W. Kamau Bell, Amy Miller and Ian Karmel.
As some stand-ups already have noted, now is a great time to purchase physical copies of records — or at least your own digital downloads to keep for yourself — from any of these comedians. On any of these labels.
So here’s where to start!
A Special Thing (AST) Records: Releases include Trevor Martin, Alex Hooper, Paul F. Tompkins, Dave Ross, Babs Gray, River Butcher, Eliza Skinner, Michelle Biloon, Andy Kindler, Andy Daly, Vanessa Gonzalez, Jamel Johnson, John Roy, Logan Guntzelman, Eric Dadourian, Tommy McNamara, Karl Hess, Megan Gailey, McQueen Adams, JC Coccoli, Chris Charpentier, Sean Jourdan, Kara Klenk, Megan Koester, Greg Proops, Georgea Brooks, Jen Kirkman, Cameron Esposito, Clare O’Kane, Howard Kremer, Jared Logan, Goodrich Gevaart, Jamie Lee, Debra DiGiovanni, and more and more and more.
Blonde Medicine: This SF-based record label has put out comedy albums for Valerie Tosi, Amy Miller, Irene Tu, Joyelle Nicole Johnson, Kyle Ayers, Janelle James, Caitlin Gill, Josh Gondelman, and many more. Go to the Blonde Medicine Store to order your faves!
Helium: Their comedy record collection, available on their site, includes recent albums by Sean Patton and Andy Haynes, plus many more.
Kill Rock Stars: Head to their Bandcamp page for the full catalog. Main clients referenced above.
Stand Up! Records: You can buy digital downloads direct from their site. In a Tweet earlier in the week, they also noted that Mondo Shop had stocked a bunch of their comedians, including Lewis Black, Chris Porter, Ryan Stout and more, with some in colored vinyl, even?
And of course, there’s also 800 Pound Gorilla Records, who brought the fight for royalty payments to Spotify last year. You can browse and shop through the 800 PGR catalog from their site.
Notably, this weekend’s purge hasn’t seemed to impact the biggest comedy catalog, currently licensed to Comedy Dynamics, who not only put out their own records but also now distribute the catalogs for Comedy Central Records and Dry Bar.
This story, obviously, is continuing to develop.
If you have information, you can email me or leave a comment! Thanks.
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