Report: SiriusXM Compelling Spoken-Word Creators to Waive Rights

Last month, stand-up star Lewis Black became the latest comedian to sue SiriusXM’s Pandora amid a broader royalties dispute. Now, evidence suggests that SiriusXM is attempting to compel different comedy professionals yet to waive their composition rights, possibly in order to add albums to Pandora.

Digital Music News just recently received word of this latest twist in the long-running – and much-publicized – royalties battle between comedians and SiriusXM-owned Pandora. Regarding the multifaceted situation’s background, Spotify in late 2021 abruptly removed a number of comedy albums from its service, including works from John Mulaney, Kevin Hart, and even Joe Rogan.

Shortly thereafter, it came to light that Spoken Giants (which bills itself as “the first global rights administration company for the owners and creators of Spoken Word copyrights”) had been engaging in licensing discussions with the Stockholm-based platform.

Also in December, an organization called Word Collections, which says that it focuses “on getting comedians and other spoken word performers paid for the use of their literary works,” announced the completion of a $3.5 million funding round. And upon revealing the multimillion-dollar raise, Word Collections made clear its belief that comics would “be paid for past and future streams and broadcasts of literary works on Spotify” and other platforms “for the first time.”

These developments set the stage for a wider confrontation concerning payments for comedians’ underlying compositions – not recordings themselves – and Pandora in February and March was named in copyright lawsuits from Bill Engvall, Nick Di Paolo, Andrew Dice Clay, and several others.

May saw Pandora fire back with an antitrust-centered countersuit, accusing the counter-defendants of price fixing, tying, attempted monopolization and monopolization, and conspiracy to monopolize, all in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

As mentioned at the outset, it now appears as though SiriusXM is compelling comedians to waive their composition royalty rights, potentially in order to feature recordings on Pandora (and collect the associated compensation).