How Spotify ended up in a battle with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell
Recognized for its annual wrap ups and controlling just under a third of the streaming industry, Spotify has fronted music streaming since its advent in 2006.
In addition to immense success Spotify has faced many controversies over its 15 year rise to the top, not least of which comes from it having one of the lowest rates of artist payment. Musicians earn just $0.0038 when someone streams their song on Spotify.
A number of artists including Taylor Swift, Prince, and the Beatles have openly expressed their contempt for streaming and withheld their music at some point, and Spotify has often borne the brunt of that hostility.
However, Spotify’s latest controversy has garnered arguably the most attention, sparking a nation-wide debate over freedom of speech and disinformation.
Joe Rogan is a comedian whose podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has garnered widespread support and criticism. The podcast reaches an estimated 11 million listeners with every episode, and has recently come under fire for Rogan’s perpetuation of COVID-19 misinformation.
Rogan has frequently made claims widely regarded as inaccurate about the COVID-19 pandemic, including that vaccines are more likely to cause myocarditis in young people than the virus itself, and that Ivermectin, a medication approved to treat certain parasitic and skin conditions, is effective at treating COVID-19.
Spotify acquired Rogan’s podcast in 2020 in a $100 million deal, but the controversy surrounding this acquisition recently escalated.
In January of 2022 a group of 270 ‘experts’ wrote an open letter to Spotify asking them to establish a clearer policy on flagging misinformation. The letter specifically cited an episode of Rogan’s podcast where he interviewed Robert Malone, a doctor and vaccine skeptic.
“Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications,” the letter said.
A number of artists, including Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, joined the calls to have Rogan’s misinformation flagged, removing their music from the platform. Spotify responded to these protests by defining its role as a distributor of audio content and claiming that it had content policies in place and has removed misinformation related to the pandemic in the past.
While Spotify has removed more than 40 of Rogan’s podcast episodes in the past, these episodes weren’t related to the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Spotify has previously said that its role is not to regulate artists and that it merely acts as a platform, but the calls to flag misinformation allege that Spotify has a responsibility to protect public health and safety.
In a blog post addressing the controversy, the Spotify team stated that the company needs to have more transparency surrounding their policies and published their guidelines.
Spotify CEO Daniel Elk made a statement in the post stating “It’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time.”
In response to the controversy, Rogan posted a video of himself apologizing and pledging to create more balanced content and acknowledging his responsibility to his listeners. Rogan said that while his podcast is only ever supposed to be conversations, he will make more of an effort to do research and include a variety of perspectives.
He also said in his video that Spotify would like to include a note that the information in his controversial episodes is disputed by mainstream experts and that he agrees with this decision.
Calls for a more thorough response from Spotify continue and a number of other artists have removed their work from Spotify or vowed to stop producing content. India.Arie, a neo-soul singer, said she would remove her music and podcasts from Spotify, citing Rogan’s previous discussions around race and sharing a compilation video of Rogan using the n-word on his show.
Rogan has since posted a video apologizing for past use of the word, saying that the clips were out of context, but were still “horrible.”
Spotify has removed 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” that predate the pandemic and while the company has not commented on the reasoning behind the removal there have been claims that Rogan used the n-word in these missing episodes.
This latest controversy comes while conversations about censorship and freedom of speech are sparking across the country, specifically in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines. Debates over banning Critical Race Theory in schools are another symptom of this general trend, as are a number of recent book banning attempts.
Book banning efforts are nothing new, but currently books about sexuality, race and gender are being targeted with a new vigor. Recent book bans are newly politicized and often include books that have been added to lists intended to diversify reading in schools including “Maus,” “The Bluest Eye,”, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The breadth of both the content and mediums being censored has expanded in recent years. While banning a book from a certain school district or a podcast from a specific platform does not entirely silence an author or speaker, it does vastly influence that medium’s reach.
Censorship is an issue that often transcends the political spectrum, garnering support or opposition based entirely on the content of the material being censored. The argument that Joe Rogan is being censored is entirely based on the control Spotify has over its market.
Corporations that reach such a large audience such as Spotify hold immense power in determining what media we as a society consume, and this is what makes the Rogan controversy so important.
Rogan’s misinformation has the potential to affect and alter many peoples’ lives. However, Spotify also has the power to essentially rid Rogan of a platform, should they do more than simply flag his podcasts, so while a number of bigger artists might agree with Young and Mitchel about the dangers of Rogan’s content, removing their work from the platform might set off a larger wave of censorship.
Misinformation and censorship are difficult issues to navigate and in an era of information overload it is becoming more possible for large corporations to weaponize both.