Snoop Dogg said artists should take a leaf out of the striking writers‘ book and take action over streaming models.
The Death Row honcho showed solidarity with the Writers Guild of America strike over compensation, questioning, “where the f### is the money.” He addressed the topic during a panel with his business partner Gamma’s Larry Jackson and Shirley Halperin, Variety‘s executive music editor.
“[Artists] need to figure it out the same way the writers are figuring it out,” Snoop stated. “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.”
Snoop Dogg Asks “Where The F### Is The Money?”
He continued, “I don’t understand how the f### you get paid off of that s###. 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 f### is the money?” Check out the clip below and watch the panel at the end of the page.
Last month, Snoop Dogg announced a partnership with Gamma that includes a long-term licensing agreement. The multimedia platform now has exclusive global rights to market and distribute the Death Row Records catalog. During the Milken Institutes’ Global Conference panel, Larry Jackson discussed Gamma’s “revolutionary” compensation structure.
“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,” Jackson explained. “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.”
The Gamma founder also opened up about royalty rates and streams on YouTube Shorts, claiming they received $16,000 for 500 million streams.
“YouTube, y’all m############ need to break bread or fake dead,” Snoop Dogg replied.