Is Spotify living its Facebook moment? The audio streaming giant is going through a controversy due to the broadcast of a very controversial podcast on the Covid-19, hosted by the American Joe Rogan. No. 1 in podcast listening on the platform in 2021, the latter is accused of having criticized the vaccination against Covid-19 and of having promoted ivermectin, a treatment against the disease not recommended by the Agency. European Medicines and the World Health Organization. To protest against this misinformation, Neil Young last week put his own musical catalog in the balance, demanding the removal of the podcaster from the platform. Wasted effort.
Failing to have won his case, the Canadian star put his threat into execution, before being soon followed by singer Joni Mitchell. In an attempt to put an end to the controversy, Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of the group, announced a series of measures on January 30, including the arrival of links in all podcasts evoking Covid-19. They will direct users to scientifically sourced information on the subject. Joe Rogan, for his part, remains on the platform. A position that is doubtful, since Spotify has spent 100 million dollars exclusively to promote its podcast. But the Swedish giant seems to want to behave as if it doesn’t have control over the content it broadcasts…
Talk about everything, all the time, with everyone
To understand the choice of the company, we must already understand who Joe Rogan is. Originally, the man had nothing of a podcaster. A former stand-up comedian in the late 1980s, he landed a few small roles in Hollywood before making a name for himself in the sports world. At the end of the 1990s, Rogan became an interviewer, then a commentator for MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) matches for the Canadian organization UFC. At the same time, he beefed up his reputation as a presenter by hosting the show FearFactor from 2001 to 2006. It was only three years later, in 2009, that he launched the podcast that would definitively establish his notoriety: The Joe Rogan Experience. Acquired in 2020 by Spotify on the occasion of a multi-year deal, the show is now exclusively broadcast on the platform.
Rogan forges this show in the image of his personality. Libertarian assumed, the former commentator hears about everything with everyone. No taboos, no limits: in his conversations with the athletes, actors, scientists and politicians who jostle at his microphone, he makes a point of talking about what no one else can say. True to this brand, he chooses his guests from a broad spectrum: activist Edward Snowden shared a long conversation with him, as did politician Bernie Sanders and entrepreneur Elon Musk. Claiming his freedom of tone to the end, Rogan has also invited eminently controversial personalities, such as the American alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos or the far-right conspirator Alex Jones.
love of controversial topics
This taste for controversy has also led him to make controversial remarks about the vaccine against Covid-19. In an episode published in April 2021, Rogan advised young adults against the injection. “If you are a healthy person, you play sports, you are young and you eat well, I do not think you need to worry, he assured. If you are 21 years old and you ask ‘Should I get vaccinated?’, I would say ‘no'”. Positive for Covid a few months later, the host then attributed his recovery to a cocktail of drugs which notably included the controversial ivermectin.
Faced with the virus, it is especially on the side of its guests that the shoe pinches. True to his reputation, Rogan, for example, had a long conversation with Robert Malone, a scientist banned from Twitter for sharing false information about Covid-19. Highly skeptical of RNA technology, the biologist was recently one of the speakers at an anti-vaccine rally in Washington. In a conversation three hour long with RoganMalone thus drew a parallel between Nazi Germany and the advice given by Anthony Fauci, adviser to the White House on the health crisis, and the “media mainstream” on the Covid. Rogan also invited Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who has by the stated past that the vaccines against Covid-19 were “experimental” and the pandemic “planned”.
A colossal challenge for Spotify
These episodes caught the attention of 270 healthcare professionals in mid-January. In open letter, they expressed concern about the content produced by Rogan, believing that his podcast posed a “threat to public health”. It was this missive that finally decided Neil Young to impose an ultimatum on Spotify, forcing the platform to choose between the two personalities. A position taken by the singer, moreover, welcomed by the boss of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Between Young and Rogan, however, Spotify quickly made its choice, preferring to deprive itself of the music of the Canadian rather than the long conversations of his favorite podcaster.
From an economic perspective, the issue is barely debated: Rogan’s show continues to be the #1 podcast in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, when Neil Young painfully rises to the rank of 778th most popular artist on the platform. With his content polemics and his conversations without limits, Joe Rogan sticks perfectly to the reasons for which Spotify signed with him a contract with 100 million dollars. The stakes are therefore colossal for the platform which has, moreover, already suffered the wrath of Rogan fans after the discreet deletion, last April, of 40 very controversial episodes from its catalog. Today, the brand does not seem in a hurry to renew the experience.
A platform little constrained by US law
American law is on his side. “If we look at it from the point of view of United States law”, explains Florence G’sell, professor of private law at the University of Lorraine and holder of the digital, governance and sovereignty chair at Sciences Po. would be section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which would allow Spotify to hide behind a status of host not responsible for the content broadcast.” Passed in 1996 under Clinton, this provision provides “ than “no provider or user of an Internet service should be treated as the publisher or author of any information provided by a third party.” “It is a text therefore provides total immunity in terms of platform liability, continues Florence G’sell. Add to that that it is generally believed that the 1st amendment to the American Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression in the face of the State, also guarantees platforms the right to moderate (or not) at their discretion and to set their conditions of use, and you understand the little leverage that exists against them.
Little constrained by American law, Spotify therefore has no interest in starting to moderate a program that brings in substantial revenue. Because while the market value of the platform has plummeted by more than $2 billion as a result of the controversy, each ad running in The Joe Rogan Experience costs advertisers a minimum of $1 million, according to The Verge, an American site dealing with information and the media. A godsend that fits perfectly into the platform’s strategy: to promote podcasts. Because unlike singers and musicians, who produce an album every two or three years, a podcast guarantees Spotify to have weekly content, at least. “Such frequency builds consumer – and subscriber – loyalty far better than any artist, which may explain why Spotify is so hesitant to let Rogan go, or even curb some of his more extreme views,” thus recalls the journalist Eamonn Forde in the Guardian.
A “pure matter of business”
Added to this is another major interest: when users listen to music on the platform, Spotify must pay a certain amount to a third party – generally the label of the artist listened to. But when listens are directed to its in-house podcasts — like The Joe Rogan Experience — the company has no outsiders to pay. The profits – income generated by simple listening, by advertising – go to him. “Having kept Joe Rogan is a pure business question, underlines Asma Mhalla, lecturer at Sciences Po where she teaches the ethical and political issues of the digital economy of platforms. This arbitration is one more signal of a blind economy before the political dimension of its content.
Like Facebook or Twitter before it, Spotify finds itself questioned about its place as a platform. Is it simply a business, or a democratic space in itself? “The company is only accountable to its shareholders, continues the specialist. From there, why curb content that generates a lot of money?” Faced with the bronca caused by the departure of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Spotify has nevertheless decided to put water in its wine, its CEO recalling in a press release Sunday – without once mentioning Joe Rogan – that the platform had already “deleted more than 20,000 episodes of Covid-related podcasts since the start of the pandemic”. The introduction of links in all podcasts evoking the virus is also part of the panoply of measures announced by its leader to extinguish the fire. “This moderation is entirely left to the goodwill of the company, to its private appreciation”, points out Florence G’sell. And therefore, ultimately, to the interests of his wallet.
But there is hope… Less from Spotify than from Joe Rogan himself. In a post Instagram published this Monday, the host thanked Spotify for its support. Without apologizing for the presence of very controversial guests on his show in the past, Rogan promised to make an effort. “I will do my best to balance controversial points of view with other perspectives, so that maybe I can find a better point of view,” he assured. More than ever, therefore, much of the information on Spotify seems to be in the hands of Joe Rogan – for better or for worse.