Not to forget that Weird Al is doing a lot of covers - so he is not the original composer of the song. Performers usually get paid way less (everybody can perform a cover of any song out there), but the composers get paid the lion share. I also doubt he gets $12 but probably lot more, the video is just intended to draw attention to Spotify's payout schemes.
Weird Al does not do covers. His albums are a mixture of parodies and fully original pieces. The parodies often use the same melody as the source work, but with original lyrics. Sometimes the music is itself parodied, and performed using an accordian or some other unique instrument.
In terms of creativity, artistic vision, lyrical difficulty or any other metric, Weird Al should be understood as an incredibly talented musician.
Sometimes the music is itself parodied, and performed using an accordian or some other unique instrument.
For this conversation, that is completely irrelevant and he still has to pay royalties to the original composer. Furthermore, while Weird Al does have many completely original songs, looking at his streaming numbers that isn't what most people seem to listen to.
The fact that he is both very talented and very creative is both true and irrelevant.
Weird Al doesn't do covers, aside from a few exceptions. He does parodies. Parody falls under fair use, so legally I don't think he has to pay royalties, though he may anyway.
I'm not a lawyer, and most of my knowledge of copyright law comes from Tom Scott's video on the subject [1], but it's worth noting that it's not universally agreed on that Weird Al's parodies fall under fair use. Again, I am not a lawyer, at best I'm a novice when it comes to copyright law, but what I do know, I agree with what Tom says: I wouldn't expect Weird Al to win if he was taken to court (if he didn't ask permission).
IIRC Weird Al treats his parodies more like covers (even going so far as to get permission), and there are credits for the composers, etc. So I wouldn't be surprised if they pay out more like covers than parodies.
He likely doesn't want to be in front of the Supreme Court someday having to defend the parodic aspect like the famous Barbie Girl case, especially as it is not clear that all of his songs are parodies of the song and not some other aspect in the format of the song.
Not disagreeing, but you have to look beyond US copyright law. Fair use is less of a thing i.e. in Europe, and his streams clearly come from all over the world. I would just assume his label made deals with the respective copyright holders covering several jurisdictions and markets just to be on the safe side. That doesn't necessarily mean they had to do those deals.
