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by m0lecules 1657 days ago
I thought this was about joke stealing, but it looks like the comedians want a cut for the performance and a separate cut for the writing. In other words, they want more of a percentage on the work that they're already getting paid for.
3 comments

A lot like songwriting where people who wrote the song and people who sing they song both get credit, they want credit for writing and for executing the joke.

It makes sense TBH.

This is what I was thinking, but then it brings up the question, how much comedy writing is the comedian? Is Kevin Hart writing his own jokes or does he have a team he employs? I know ghost producing is common in music. This could actually make sense. But I can see Spotify and others coming back and saying "You're right, we should split it, and we will pay X% to party one and Y% to party two as long as X+Y=100"
Standup comics write their own material, and develop it in live performances. There should be a different label for comedians that use other people's material (talentless hack, maybe. Only slightly kidding. )

That aside, there is an actual value to what artists contribute to a platform's earnings. That actual value comprises the revenue generated by ad views and purchases through the distribution of an artist's content. Subtract the infrastructure, labor, and operations and management costs, and you're left with some percentage "X" of the total. For an exclusive deal with a platform, 50% of X would be reasonable, since they're partnering to mutual benefit. For a star with lots of earning potential, you could see a deal for more than 50% of X, and for other artists, the value of being on the platform might mean they only get a 5% cut.

The way things are done now, I think most artists are getting under 1% of X, and that's paid out grudgingly. C class employees of the platforms and middle management are playing the usual corporate vampire games, sucking up almost all of the profits earned by exploiting artists.

The sad part is that if they played fair and eliminated the useless vampires, everyone would be better off.

People fighting for a larger cut off revenue they're responsible for generating makes perfect sense to me, as long as "X" makes sense in the context of the actual costs and value of platforms.

Creating and performing is always always separately compensated. Think Actors and writers, singers and songwriters, et,c