Snoop Dogg has some thoughts about the writer's strike — namely that he agrees with writers' demand to be fairly compensated for their work with the advent of streaming.
Earlier this week, the Writers Guild of America went on strike over compensation, and during a panel on Wednesday at Milken Institutes’ Global Conference with Shirley Halperin, Variety‘s executive music editor, and Gamma’s Larry Jackson, Snoop's co-panelist and business partner, Snoop said music artists should take a cue from screen writers who are fighting for fair compensation.
“[Artists] need to figure it out the same way the writers are figuring it out,” he said per Variety. "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.”
He said as of right now, the compensation model just doesn't make sense.
"I don’t understand how the fuck you get paid off of that shit," he said. "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?”
As for Gamma's partnership with Snoop, it involves the exclusive rights to market and distribute the Death Row Records catalog, which was brought back to streaming earlier this year. Jackson called Snoop's vision and partnership with the company "revolutionary."
“Snoop could’ve gone to any three of [the major labels]… but [he] would be getting paid on a biannual basis," Jackson said. "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.”