


After all, Spotify is the most popular audio streaming service in the world. TSIOULCAS: Well, no one else of that stature certainly has pulled their material as of now. MARTIN: Is he setting a possible precedent here? I mean, does it look like any other musicians are going to follow? His songs have been streamed hundreds of millions of times on Spotify, and now he is certainly one of the most significant musical artists who doesn't appear on the service.

I mean, Neil Young - obviously icon, hugely successful musician. According to Rolling Stone magazine, wrote - Young wrote in part, quote, "I'm doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines, potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. TSIOULCAS: Yes, very quickly, but it was up long enough to get his message out there. And then Neil Young took his open letter down? And he asked them to remove his music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan, who has been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. Just on Monday, Young briefly posted an open letter on his own website, addressed his management and his record label. MARTIN: So this is a little bit of a saga. "I think they just ride this out and hope that it goes away," he said.ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Hey. The calculus for Spotify can change if the protest snowballs, says Colin Stutz, news director at Billboard magazine. He said he likes to have conversations with people who offer different perspectives, and said that some things once considered misinformation - that cloth masks were not good at protecting against COVID, for example - are now accepted.īut he said he could do a better job having people who dispute controversial opinions like Malone's on faster so his listeners will hear the different perspective. Rogan spoke publicly for the first time late Sunday, saying he's sorry his critics feel the way they do, and it wasn't his intention to upset anyone or spread misinformation. "This could be just window-dressing," he says. Will Rogan's audience actually listen to an advisory and then hunt down other COVID information? Yet it's not clear that anyone has effectively dealt with the issue of misinformation spread through podcasts, Wihbey says. Spotify has shown more transparency in the past few days than it ever has about how it deals with questionable content, and the new policy is a good first step, says John Wihbey, a Northeastern University professor and specialist in emerging technologies. The company announced that it would add a warning before all podcasts that discuss COVID-19, directing listeners to factual information on the pandemic from scientists and public health experts. What is Spotify doing to quiet the protests? The Swedish company is gunning to be the premiere podcasting platform, investing hundreds of millions of dollars since 2019 to buy podcast companies like Gimlet and Anchor, and sign top hosts like Rogan and Dax Shepard. In the long term, Spotify has more control over potential revenue from podcasts than it does for music, Mulligan says. He's the centerpiece of the company's strategy to become an audio company rather than just a music company.
#JOE ROGAN SPOTIFY MUSICIANS LICENSE#
Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million to license Rogan's podcast, its most popular. Music accounts for the vast majority of Spotify's revenue, but Rogan represents its future. Everyone in Spotify's top 10 list of most-streamed artists, led by Drake's 44 billion, are from past the turn of the century, with the possible exception of Eminem, who first became popular in 1999.įor those artists, and for Spotify, taking a stand like Young's would have much more serious financial consequences. While losing Young and Mitchell may be a psychic blow, what would really matter is if a more current artist takes up the cause.
