February 23, 2022 | Written by - Sophia Casa '23
On December 31st, 2022, the 11-million listener-averaging Spotify Exclusive podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, uploaded an episode featuring an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist known for his work on mRNA vaccines and, more recently, for his spread of COVID-19 misinformation. Ten days later, 270 medical professionals published a letter urging Spotify to take action towards the actor, comedian, and UFC commentator. Following that, many musical artists and podcasters, like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, India.Arie, Roxanne Gay, and the Ava DuVernay-owned collective, Array, removed or are in the process of removing their content from Spotify due to The Joe Rogan Experience’s spread of misinformation and use of racial slurs. Even now, rumors swirl of artists like the Foo Fighters and Barry Manilow potentially leaving the platform as well. While these removals can be seen merely as symbolic or ineffectual, they reveal two incredibly interesting questions about this whole saga: How much does Joe Rogan really mean to Spotify? Who should take responsibility for sharing views that promote dangerous beliefs?
It may seem perplexing why Spotify, which fundamentally is a music streaming service, would allow big artists like Young, DuVernay, and Mitchell to leave the platform. However, the hard truth is that despite being a business dedicated to music, Spotify is just that, a business. When put in a situation where you have to choose between a musical artist who may make you a couple hundred thousand dollars a year or a podcaster with a large fanbase you pay 200 million for, you will end up choosing the person who will make you more money, which in this case is Joe Rogan. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, made it clear to employees that Rogan was a necessary part of the company in order to compete with other services from Apple and Google. However, this also means that Spotify is then tied to Rogan and his guests’ controversial views. There’s a contradictory nature in the way that Spotify spends their time and resources aiding organizations helping with vaccine equity and promoting COVID-19 safety, while also having a central figure of their organization spreading misinformation. Spotify is in the midst of a difficult balancing act and as voices for and against Rogan grow, they may not be able to maintain it for much longer.
This then leads us to the final question: who should take responsibility for these incidents? Should Spotify, as the powerful multi-billion dollar company, take control and remove these controversial episodes, if not Rogan altogether? Even when the company did remove 113 episodes of the podcast, episodes like the one with Malone still remain. Is Spotify’s own response penned by Daniel Ek, with measures such as a content advisory for any podcast featuring the topic of COVID-19, even enough to prevent this harmful rhetoric? As for Rogan, who is the creator and main force behind the Joe Rogan Experience, should he be the one to take responsibility for this misinformation and avoid booking guests who would perpetuate it? In a ten minute video posted on Instagram on January 30th, nearly a month after the Malone episode’s upload and the same day as Spotify’s own statement, Rogan said that “the podcast started out as just f*****g around with my friends and talking. And then [when] it became popular… and then boom, it’s become what it is today, which is like some out of control juggernaut that I barely have control of ”. Therefore, if Spotify is dedicated to being mostly hands off and if Rogan himself admits that he barely is calling the shots anymore, then who is to blame here? It’s a complex question that doesn’t have an answer now, and may not ever. However one thing is abundantly clear, as this saga continues, Spotify and Rogan will have more eyes on them than ever before; their audience isn't just 11 million listeners anymore.
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