Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, & More Comedians Removed From Spotify

BYCole Blake32.3K Views
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Kevin Hart, Spotify
Hundreds of comedians were removed from Spotify over a royalty payments dispute.

Content from Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, and hundreds of other comedians has been removed from Spotify over a dispute regarding royalty payments. A large group of comedians is hoping to earn royalty payments when their content is played on streaming services similar to the way musicians earn money for the usage of their music.

Spoken Giants, the organization representing the comedians, released a statement explaining their position on their website: "Compared to music and other media, Spoken Word assets are under-represented in today's sonic landscape and more importantly key rights, provided for under copyright law, are not paid by the very channels that obtain great value from using comedy works, podcasts, and other spoken-word assets."

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Among the comedians represented by Spoken Giants are Gabriel Iglesias, Patton Oswalt, Paula Poundstone, Roy Wood Jr., and more.

In response, a Spotify spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly that the company "has paid significant amounts of money for the content in question, and would love to continue to do so."

They continued: "It's imperative that the labels that distribute this content, Spotify, and Spoken Giants come together to resolve this issue to ensure this content remains available to fans around the globe."

[Via]


About The Author
Cole Blake is a current staff writer at HotNewHipHop based out of New York City. He began writing for the site as an intern back in 2018 while finishing his B.A. in Journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s covered a number of breaking stories for HNHH. These include the ongoing YSL RICO trial, the allegations surrounding Diddy, and much more. His work also extends outside of hip-hop, having written extensively about a myriad of topics including politics, sports, and pop culture. He’s attended several music festivals to provide coverage for the site as well, such as Rolling Loud and Governors Ball.
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