Joe Rogan is a well known comedian, actor and popular podcaster who jump started his career on Youtube. According to newrepublic.com, in May of 2020 Spotify signed Rogan to a 100 million dollar deal to let Spotify distribute his podcast. The podcast is called “The Joe Rogan Experience” and is basically a long form conversation with Joe and his friends.
On “The Joe Rogan Experience” Joe interviews all kinds of people from comedians to politicians and journalists. In one of Rogan’s recent podcasts he interviewed US cardiologist, Peter McCullough and vaccine scientist, Dr. Robert Malone. The guests shared their opinions on how the pandemic started and talked about vaccines and other treatments for Covid-19. After this episode was aired, Joe Rogan’s podcast was accused of disclosing misinformation about Covid-19. According to cnet.com there was also a compilation video of Joe Rogan using racial slurs in multiple episodes. Viewers were offended by his use of racial slurs and in response, Spotify ended up removing a couple of episodes that contained derogatory terms. According to The New York Times, the situation grew more tense and civil rights groups started to begin a boycott. Advertisers began pulling their campaign and creators threatened to leave. Creators like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Brene Brown have pulled their work off Spotify or are not releasing additional episodes until further notice. Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek responded to this situation and said ”it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being a content censor.” Spotify refused to stop the deal with Rogan although they did agree to put a warning on episodes that bring up Covid-19 and have a link to health information. According to news.com, Joe Rogan also had a response to the feedback. Rogan responded with a nine-minute video saying that “Both of these people are very highly credentialed, highly accomplished people who have opinions who differ from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is.”
There have been similar situations that have happened in the media. For instance Netflix released a show called “The Closer” in 2021 with the comedian Dave Chappelle. The show was accused of using comedy to conceal bigotry. According to Time, the show evoked a backlash because of the jokes about gay people and transgender people. Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Co Chief Executive, responded to his employees with an email saying the show did not cross the line of hate or violence. Sarandosinsisted on keeping the show on Netflix despite the controversy because it did not stop the viewership from going up. Soon after Ted’s response transgender people and alies that worked for Netflix organized a walkout to reflect their anger with the situation.
Situations like these can make a little or large impact on platforms. According to the New York Times, it is hard to tell what is going to happen with Spotify, but it is possible for Mr. Young and Ms. Mitchell to make an impact on other big artists and convince them to leave. Spotify also makes most of their money off subscriptions, so it is not likely for the platform to struggle financially unless there is a large number of cancellations. Why did Spotify choose Joe Rogan over Neil Young? According to the Washington Post, the decision was not really about Neil or Rogan, it was about Spotify looking to maximize their profits. Since 2019, Spotify has been planning to put 500 million dollars into the podcast industry. So far Spotify’s plan has worked. Spotify has taken over Apple podcasts to be the largest podcast provider in the United States.