Kasperli is making his comeback on Spotify

Christmas takes place with Kasperli. The consequences of the Swiss no-good are back on Spotify. The background is a dispute with the tech company over the playing time of chapters.

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Tra-tra trallala – tra tra trallala – De Kasperli isch against there, de Kasperli isch do. In fact: Kasperli is “against there”. Back on the Spotify streaming service. Just in time for the Christmas holidays, the popular radio plays with Jörg Schneider are online again.

The background is a dispute between the Swedish tech giant Spotify and several radio play publishers. It is about the length of the individual chapters. While Spotify requires a minimum length of three minutes, Kasperli and numerous Globi episodes did not meet these requirements. The streaming service compensates the publishers for each chapter played, which is why it is in Spotify’s interest that they have a certain playing time. The capital length of the Punch and Judy Theater was determined long before Spotify was founded.

At first Globi buckled

In mid-September, Spotify then followed through on its threat and removed all Kasperli episodes. And many Globi stories were no longer available in the online catalog. The two popular favorites had no choice but to re-edit all the episodes. At first Globi buckled. At the end of September, the first episodes of the child hero with his bills were online again. The responsible publisher has changed the chapters so that they are always exactly three minutes long. The fear that the consequences would be banned from Spotify in the long term was too great – the tech group is by far the largest player in the market.

Now also Kasperli. But here those responsible chose a different path: Instead of laboriously cutting the chapters anew, the publisher put the episodes right up in the play, without dividing them into chapters. As with the cassettes or the records back then. At Punch and Judy Theater 16 there is “D Häx Nörgeligäx und de Umemuuli” on side A and “De burned Härdöpfelstock” on side B. The publisher is probably missing out on a nice chunk of money, but numerous children (and thus their parents too) should be happy that Kasperli is up to mischief on the streaming service again.

Spotify has not yet responded to a request from CH Media on the subject. The group has 2.2 million users in Switzerland, but no office – that is one of the points criticized by the domestic radio play publishers. A study recently found that two thirds of users in Switzerland have a paid Spotify subscription. This means that the group should generate over CHF 200 million annually in this country.