Spotify responds to Joe Rogan controversy with COVID-19 content warnings

After a string of open letters sent to Spotify urging the site to remove Joe Rogan from its podcast list due to misinformation about vaccines, Neil Young, the legendary musician, removed his music from Spotify. The uproar caused by Young’s protest prompted Spotify to finally issue a statement on Sunday.

On Jan. 30, in a blog post credited to Spotify founder Daniel Ek (that does not mention either Young or Rogan), Spotify announced that it was “working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19” which, when implemented, direct listeners to a COVID hub where they can find updates from the BBC, Politico, CNN, and other mainstream news sources.

“A decade ago, we created Spotify to enable the work of creators around the world to be heard and enjoyed by listeners around the world,” Ek writes in the post. “To our very core, we believe that listening is everything. You can find opinions and people on both sides of almost every issue. There are many Spotify users and opinions that I strongly disagree with. While we recognize that our role is critical in supporting creator expression, while also balancing safety for users, it’s clear to us that there are important responsibilities. In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”

Young’s condemnation of Spotify echoes the whirlwind around the release of Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special Get Closer This led to many streamers being criticized by creators as well as employees. These two instances felt part of a larger, more growing conversation: What responsibility does content platforms bear for the biggest stars they publish?

These controversies are not all equal. In October 2021, Chappelle received a lot of criticism for brags during his special The closer he was “team [trans-exclusionary radical feminist]” and comparing trans presentation to blackface. At the time, trans and LGBTQ comedians spoke out about Chappelle’s Netflix special, but the highest-profile action consisted of dozens of Netflix’s own employees performing a walk out. That protest had its own counter-protestors, and when Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, admitted that he “should have recognized the fact that a group of our employees was really hurting,” the issue seemed to fade into the background of a constantly humming news cycle.

Neil Young no longer wanting to be on the same platform as Chappelle’s fellow comedian Joe Rogan presents a different type of problem: one major artist calling out another. In his first letter, now deleted, Young now-famously laid down an ultimatum: Spotify could have “Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Citing Rogan and Spotify’s 2020 multiyear licensing deal, where Spotify gets exclusive access to Joe Rogan Experience in exchange for what many reports have said is over $100 million, Young’s initial letter noted that JRE “is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” while the company “has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

In the Spotify blog post, Ek emphasizes that Spotify has been “biased toward action” when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. But there’s a caveat: “I trust our policies, the research and expertise that inform their development, and our aspiration to apply them in a way that allows for broad debate and discussion, within the lines. For the benefit of both creators and listeners, we will continue to invest in platform functionality and product capability. That doesn’t mean that we always get it right, but we are committed to learning, growing and evolving.” There is no mention of Joe Rogan or Neil Young or specific issues that have entered the public discourse. The post was published in response to “a lot of questions.”

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Bullish investors believe that Spotify’s investment in original And exclusive podcasts will make it an omnipresent cultural force, similar to how Netflix became an “and chill” cultural touchstone when it started making shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black

Not only that, House of Cards When working with Kevin Spacey was no longer feasible, Spotify had to make strange arrangements. Spotify may find itself in similar territory with Rogan at the center of its business strategy. Even though, according to Young’s second letter, Spotify represented 60 percent of his global streaming, the app had become “a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.”

Spotify initially announced in response to Young that the company had “great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators,” and had removed “20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic,” But after the episode purge, Spotify left up JRE #1757 with Dr. Robert Malone, whose claims of mass societal hypnosis and comparisons of the pandemic response to the Holocaust prompted over 200 medical professionals signed a letter stating its airing was “medically and culturally dangerous.”

Here’s another difference between Netflix and Spotify: While the former has tight control over what appears on its platform, it’s easy for anyone to upload a podcast to Spotify. In a video promotion, the company states that it takes just 15 minutes to get a podcast uploaded from any hosting platform to Spotify listeners all over the globe. Anyone can enter this battle with only a computer, microphone and a microphone.

The ease of the removal of podcast episodes was swift enough to create the impression of two-tiered Spotify systems: One for big stars, who have the freedom to say and do what they like, and one that is open for all. YouTube claims that there is a double standard has haunted it for years.

Netflix and Spotify seem unlikely to remove work by its major stars, who regularly sell out stadiums. But Young’s involvement gives protestors something that didn’t appear in the varied responses to Chappelle: star power. Young has his own streaming website, the Neil Young Archives. He is also an inductee twice to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s almost a triple-inductee, as another band in which he played a crucial role, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, is also there.

If former President Donald Trump and the #FreeBritney movement have shown anything, it’s that causes become much easier to rally around in the social-media era when their focal point is a celebrity. Importantly, stars can also influence celebrities beyond the large networks they have. Shortly after Young’s announcement, folk legend and fellow Rock Hall-er Joni Mitchell joined him in a blog post titled “I Stand With Neil Young!”

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Nils Lofgren (Bruce Springsteen collaborator) has joined Mitchell and Young. What if Springsteen joined them? There are rumours on Twitter about who the next platform user will be, ranging from Springsteen to Willie Nelson and Pearl Jam. In the media industry, there’s a common belief that three examples of anything establishes a trend.

Spotify has been a target for many musicians who have waited a while to be able to defend themselves. The status of labor in their respective media is another difference between Netflix and Spotify. Television and movies have long used powerful labor guilds like Screen Actor’s Guild and the Writer’s Guild of America to set industry standards. Netflix couldn’t be successful in Hollywood without meeting the various pay requirements of SAG-AFTRA, the WGA, and many others. Netflix has signed a deal with SAG-AFTRA in order to have expanded coverage in 2019

Spotify is able to negotiate deals with big labels in music without artists having much input. Union of Musicians and Allied Workers has specific requirements for Spotify, including paying at least 1 cent per stream and adopting a user-centric model of payment and crediting every worker involved in production.

Young’s second open letter expands on the musician’s several beefs with Spotify. Young derides the “shitty degraded and neutered sound” of the app. So far, these three complaints about Spotify — a seeming double standard on free speech, poor payouts to musicians, and inferior technical quality — have remained mostly separate. If Young’s movement can unite all three, gain momentum through artists large and small, and present clear, actionable goals, than Spotify may have more than a few weeks worth of bad headlines on its hands.