Pandora settles comedians' lawsuit over streaming royalties

By Blake Brittain

Feb 2 (Reuters) - SiriusXM's [RIC:RIC:SXRI.UL] Pandora Media has settled a lawsuit from prominent comedians including the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin that accused the company of failing to pay to stream their material, according to a filing in California federal court.

The filing from Friday said the parties reached the settlement during a conference last week. A SiriusXM spokesperson said on Monday that the terms of the settlement were confidential, but it did not pay the comedians for the literary work rights at issue or take new licenses tied to the allegations in the lawsuit.

The comedian's attorney Richard Busch of King & Ballow said that the case was settled amicably.

The lawsuit was brought by comedians including Bill Engvall, Ron White and Andrew Dice Clay in 2022. They said that Pandora's licenses to the comedians' recordings did not include their underlying jokes, and that they had not seen a "fraction of a penny" from Pandora's streams.

While companies like Pandora often negotiate music licenses with performing-rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI, the comedians said these groups do not license "literary works" like spoken-word comedy.

Pandora responded that the comedians and performing-rights organization Word Collections had formed a "cartel" to inflate their royalty rates. U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi rejected Pandora's antitrust counterclaim against the comedians in 2023.

A special master appointed by the court recommended last year that Pandora should win the case because it was licensed to stream the comedians' routines.

The case is In re Pandora Media LLC Copyright Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, No. 2:22-cv-00809.

Read more:

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