Comedian Lewis Black has called for Spotify to remove his work from the platform until his fellow comics’ full catalogs are restored to the streaming service.
Black’s request comes in the wake of Spotify pulling down hundreds of comedy albums on Nov. 24 amid an ongoing dispute with publishing-rights company Spoken Giants—which has also been joined by its contemporary Word Collections in the fight—over whether comedians deserve royalties on their written work rather than just the audio of their performances.
Unlike in the music world, where royalties are paid to a song’s writer as well as the artist who performs the master recording—sometimes one and the same—comedians do not receive royalties for writing their own jokes.
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