Update as of
As you may have seen, on Monday, October 5th, comedians from all over shared messages online appealing to Sebastian Maniscalco and SiriusXM to reverse course on the programming changes that the channel has seen since June of this year. Hundreds of comedians voiced their objections and it was a wonderful display of solidarity among comedians of all levels (#siriussebastian was used and you can find hundreds of such videos there).
In addition, news outlets picked up the story and even managed to get official statements from SiriusXM on the matter:
CNNDeadlineHollywood ReporterTMZVultureThere are others. Google ’em.
On Wednesday, October 7th, Sebastian responded with an Instagram Story addressing the matter. We like and appreciate his response. He assured comics that he heard their protests and has asked for some time to make adjustments. Very reasonable. And it came off as genuine. Thank you, Sebastian. So… now what? We’re so glad you asked.
We will continue to monitor programming on the channel as we have been. And we will update our data at the beginning of November to include another month’s worth of spins. We hope to see some changes on the channel that help showcase comedians as broadly as had been the case before mid-June.
If you’re a comedian: We hope you feel as positive and gratified as we do about this little movement for transparency and solidarity. Let’s keep pushing to make this business better. If you have any issues that you want Stand Up for Standup to support you on, reach out using the form on our site. We also know that there are three months of lost royalties that will be realized this month. If you have been impacted financially by this ongoing situation, we encourage you to apply for our financial hardship grant.
If you’re a comedy fan: Support your favorite comedians and local comedy shows and clubs. Buy merch! Comedians are making thoughtful, fun, bespoke merch that you can buy directly from them. Consider adding their wares to your collection. And, subscribe to SiriusXM and listen to their standup programming. There are 10 comedy channels, each with a different flavor. Find your favorite.
Be good to each other and let’s keep fighting to make things better than they are. Our work is not done and we will remain dedicated to this (and other) issues impacting comedians. Thank you, as always, for your time and attention.
Stand Up for Standup
Middle Class Comedians Cut Out of Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio
We at Stand Up for Stand Up have been closely monitoring an evolving situation that impacts hundreds of comedians and their livelihoods. Recently, SiriusXM’s uncensored comedy channel, Raw Comedy (formerly channel 99), has been rebranded as Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio (now on the dial at channel 102). SiriusXM has long been an extremely meaningful source of earnings for comedians at all stages in their careers. Both supporting the bottom line, and providing access to a national audience tuning in specifically to hear stand up on satellite radio.
With a channel rebrand comes an expected change in programming. This article is written to document some of the changes we’ve seen, and how it is impacting what we refer to as “the middle class of comedy” – those comics who are making a reasonable living from their comedy career, but are often still living paycheck to paycheck, and not (yet) household names. Those comics have historically enjoyed meaningful spins from SiriusXM, which aids in supporting their comedy career in the form of passive royalty earnings (each SiriusXM satellite radio spin earns approximately $15 in royalties to the comic).
As you’ll see from the data below, the spins on Sebastian’s channel have drastically shifted from a wider pool of 800+ comedians enjoying spins (and thus, royalties and exposure to the audience of listeners), to a narrower pool of comedians getting plays per month. And of those few hundred who are getting spins, over 75% of the plays are going to the top 50 artists, which results in a concentration of wealth among the top echelon, which is largely made up of big-name celebrity comics.
We believe this shift, both in the overall quantity of artists enjoying plays on Channel 102, and the change in distribution across all spin-getters favoring the top few, is bad for comedians, and bad for the future of comedy. It hurts passive revenue, and discoverability, as well as the infrastructure that supports up and coming comedians. We hope that this observation can help inform the channel's programming, which for years has been a champion of emerging comedians.
Sebastian Maniscalco's Comedy Radio – Oct 2025 – Sep 2026
SiriusXM's Raw Comedy channel rebranded as Sebastian Maniscalco's Comedy Radio in April 2026. In the months since, programming on the channel has changed in ways that affect which comedians get airtime: the pool of acts getting spins has shrunk, and the spins that remain have concentrated into a smaller, more marquee-heavy lineup.
Data provided by XMPlaylist. If you’re a comedian curious about your spin numbers, visit www.xmplaylist.com to search the last 60 days of your spin history for free. Special thanks to Scott Cooper of XMPlaylist for his help.
Fewer Comics Earning Residuals
Total spins per month barely moved all year (7,800–9,400). What changed is how many different acts split them — the active roster shrank by roughly 66% as the channel rebrand took hold, from a high of 812 acts in April to 275 in September, and airtime concentrated hard into fewer names.
← Scroll back for earlier months
A Steep Change in the Distribution of Spins
Each month, the top 100 is calculated by ranking total spins per act. June 2026 saw a shift — that month, nearly half the names on the top 100 list were swapped out, and spins shifted toward a much smaller roster featuring more famous performers, receiving heavier rotation - a staggering concentration of wealth. The chart below is split into six bands of that month's ranking: 1–10, 11–25, 26–50, 51–75, 76–100, and everyone past rank 100. Watch the palest band — the long tail — shrink to almost nothing by July, stay there through August, and decrease even further in September.
← Scroll back for earlier months
View as table
Who’s in Rotation, Before and After
The spin counts show how much airtime moved. The names show who moved with it. Below, the 100 most-played acts of March 2026 — the last full month before the rebrand — sit beside the 100 most-played acts of September 2026, which just closed. Only 25 names appear on both lists. The other 75 were replaced, one for one.
March 2026 — before
Ranked 1–100, spins in parenthesesSeptember 2026 — after
Ranked 1–100, spins in parenthesesSpins by rank, before and after
Rank, not act — #40 in March is not #40 in SeptemberScroll on for the lower ranks →
The two curves cross at about rank 72–73. Above that point September pours far more spins into far fewer names — 183 for the top act, against 90 in March. Below it, March’s much wider roster keeps spreading spins down a long tail that September’s rotation no longer has: the 100th-ranked act drew 25 spins in March, and 4 in September.
View as table
Stay tuned
Thank you for reading. When October closes, we will update the data to include it in early November. If you are a comedian that has been impacted and want to apply for a financial hardship grant, submit here.
If you're interested in your personal spin data, and how it's changing on SiriusXM, you can try out a free ad-supported tier at XMPlaylist.com. If you want to dig deeper, you can use code COMEDY for a first-month free or $9 off your yearly subscription.