Writers Strike Gets Co-Sign From Snoop Dogg

The recent Writers Guild strike has Snoop Dogg feeling a certain way.

The Death Row Records owner had harsh words for the “f*cked up” streaming business models that prompted the Writers Guild of America to walk out in protest over pay.

During a discussion on Wednesday with Larry Jackson of Gamma, his fellow panelist, and Shirley Halperin, executive music editor of Variety, Snoop made the following statement: “[Artists] need to figure it out the same way the writers are figuring it out. The writers are striking because [of] streaming, they can’t get paid. Because when it’s on the platform, it’s not like in the box office.

“I don’t understand how the fuck you get paid off of that shit. Somebody explain to me how you can get a billion streams and not get a million dollars?… That’s the main gripe with a lot of us artists is that we do major numbers… but it don’t add up to the money. Like where the fuck is the money?”

writers strike — *Snoop Dogg empathizes with the Writers Guild strike, feeling music artists also get shortchanged by streaming services; credit: CBS*

Snoop Dogg Salutes The Writers Guild Strike

Gamma and Snoop’s collaboration entails the unique rights to promote and disseminate the Death Row Records back catalog.

“Snoop could’ve gone to any three of [the major labels]… but [he] would be getting paid on a biannual basis. But now [that Gamma] has the… financial analytics dashboard, we’re paying Snoop once a month. There are certain artists that are coming to our distribution company and getting paid once a week — you gotta understand how revolutionary this is, this doesn’t exist in the music business like this,” spoke Jackson.

Jackson specifically mentioned the issue of YouTube Shorts royalty figures and streams. “Right now the distribution company, we’re doing about 5 billion streams across all platforms in the entire world every single month… we actually had our best months ever at Spotify and Apple for April for the third consecutive month… 500 million of those streams are being done through YouTube Shorts. So when I hear the earnings report last week for Alphabet, and they’re talking about how much they want to accelerate the growth of YouTube Shorts, it was a bit concerning to me.”