Royalty Rights for Comedy and Spoken Word – I’ll Be Here All Night, Folks

Comedy and spoken word, including podcasts, are a popular form of content, appearing in streamable and downloadable mediums on major platforms. However, until recently, comedy and spoken word were often left out of the traditional royalty discussion. This panel will explore the existing rights surrounding it and the efforts being made to collect royalties for creators.

Andrea Coleman is a Brooklyn based writer, performer and lawyer originally from Virginia. She writes sketch comedy, standup comedy, screenplays and stage plays. Her Medium articles have been viewed over half a million times. The law comedy show she created and stars in, “Wack or Woke? Andrea Coleman Judges the Law,” has been featured in The New York Times, TimeOut NY, NPR and aired on PBS’ All Arts Channel. In New York, Andrea has performed standup at Comedy Cellar, Comic Strip, Gotham and Caroline’s. She’s toured her standup at San Francisco Sketchfest, Women in Comedy Festival and Austin Sketch Fest. Andrea has written and executive produced 5 short films which have been Official Selections at 16 Film Festivals. One of her shorts, BFF, aired on BET and AspireTV. Andrea is in her 14th year as a Senior Trial Attorney at a Fortune 100 company.

Jim King is CEO of Spoken Giants, LLC the world’s first and largest rights administration company for spoken word “genres” such as comedy, podcasting, and audio renderings of multiple formats. The company, founded with Damion Greiman and Ryan Bitzer in early 2019 provides services as a performance rights and mechanical rights company, and provides publisher services for its many affiliated members – comedians, podcasters, and other spoken word rights holders. Mr. King is also Chief Technology Officer for Outsell, Incorporated and for VNUE, Inc. Throughout his career and along with partners and with investors King has helped create numerous new companies including music consumption identification and licensing with Core Rights, consumer product identification and commerce company, GlooMedia, health AI and blockchain business, NRGHealth, and AI services company, Esteem Software Incorporated. Previously King was the SVP of Business Operations and Information Technology for Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), Global CIO for UBM – PRNewswire, CIO for The McGraw-Hill Companies, CTO for LexisNexis and Reed Elsevier, Strategy Director for Microsoft, and Senior Engineer and Architect for AT&T Bell Labs and NCR Corporation.

Jeff Price is Founder and CEO of Word Collections, Founder and CEO of Audiam, Founder of TuneCore and. President / GM / Co-Founder spinART Records. In July, 2020 Jeff launched Word Collections. Word Collections works for comedians and other spoken word performers to license and collect “Literary Work” royalties earned when digital or terrestrial radio broadcast recordings of their works as well as other uses. Word Collections currently represents iconic comedy routines from George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Louie Anderson, Sinbad, Jim Breuer, Margaret Cho, Bill Engvall, Roy Wood Jr. Jake Johannsen, Milton Berle, Bill Dana (Jose Jimenez), Rich Vos and others.

Emilie Kennedy (Moderator) is General Counsel for Vixen Media Group. At Vixen, she focuses on a broad range of matters including contracts, first amendment rights, intellectual property, anti-piracy, employment law and privacy. Prior to joining Vixen, she focused her legal career on content protection for movie studios, record labels, music publishers and songwriters. She holds a B.A. from the University of Vermont, a Master’s in Music Business from the University of Miami and a J.D. from Florida International University. During law school, she spent a summer studying copyright at the University of Cambridge and as a law clerk for the United States Copyright Office, Office of the General Counsel.

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