Doesn't JRE have guests on there with cemented right-wing opinions, and in general controversial figures from which he gains his popularity/notoriety? Is Spotify going to allow those guests or is JRE going to have to censor?
I think there is a small but important difference when Spotify enters the kind of agreement they did with JRE, effectively becoming his publisher. I see them as more responsible for his content than e.g the lyrics of any song in their catalog.
> Will you not shop at a bookstore that sells Alex Jones books?
It depends. I’m not going to judge a store by having a large selection of books including things I disagree with. But if the store has a huge display of Jones books on a big table in the center? An Alex Jones book signing is taking place in the store? Yeah I’m probably going elsewhere.
The risk here I think is that people like Alex Jones are included in what we call “the political spectrum”. He’s not part of it. Booting him isn’t a political stance. He’s not some voice of right wing politics or even extreme right or “alt right”.
This just further exemplifies the entire issue with podcast exclusivity deals. At this point, shows like JRE are signing away the independence that typically comes with podcasting.
I wonder how this will change Rogan's show going forward, he might be more gunshy about having Alex Jones on for 5 hours if Spotify can come in at any time and censor his content.
Yes, which is one reason I dislike Rogan. However, Spotify and Jones aren't in direct business (making money off their business deal together). I'm fine with Spotify and Rogan doing business.
It's not that I go around worrying about what's said in every song and podcast on Spotify, it's rather whether I agree with Spotify's business practices or not. I wish Spotify told Rogan to stop having conspiracy theorists on his show (unless they are critically exposed), but I don't consider Alex Jones as being a part of Spotify's business model because he is a guest in one of their pods.
Why would you choose to leave Spotify over Alex Jones when it hosts literal white power bands like Skrewdriver? His podcast is by no means the worst content on there.
That's a good question. Contractual obligations with Spotify? I've been pondering this for a while. It does seem somewhat plausible because some of the episodes removed weren't controversial. Rogan also hasn't commented on this. It's also unclear whether he would deny it even if it was false. I've also been wondering why would Alex Jones lie about this? If he was going to create a narrative, I would expect it to have some crazy "Democrat elite controlling the media" bend to it.
Yeah, I don't know how it's going to work. He's said previously on his show that he only signed the deal with Spotify because they were going to be hands off and not control who he could talk to, including Alex Jones. As soon as his past episodes were uploaded to Spotify, it was clear that someone was mislead/lied to. Some episodes weren't uploaded to Spotify, like Alex Jones and one of his friends who's a flat earther, but also some comedians that got cancelled by twitter mobs.
Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
I wonder if, perhaps, this is in any way related to Spotify's censorship of Alex Jones (hear me out). Not because of any political agenda on the part of Warner, but because, unlike Apple, YouTube or Facebook, Spotify is a subscription-based content service. Where Apple, YouTube, and Facebook have a significant buffer against Alex Jones' somewhat fanatical fanbase leaving their platforms, Spotify has no such insulation. Spotify has 70 million paying subscribers as of Jan. 2018. Jones has 7.5 million unique visitors to his website, which is a tertiary method of access, behind his radio syndication (secondary) and YouTube and Podcasts (primary)[1]. His podcast peaked at the #9 position on the Itunes podcast chart (Sorry, I had trouble finding download numbers, but given that the top ten podcast publishers had a unique monthly listenership anywhere between 5.2 and 4.3 million, assuming 4.5 million from podcasts is likely reasonable)[2, 3]. And his radio listenership is counted at 5.9 million [4]. On YouTube, he had 2.5 million subscribers and 17.6 million video views [5]. So, assuming that some people are superfans, we can probably assume that his peak reach, among people who sought him out is somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 million. That's ignoring the fact that his podcast with Joe Rogan was the most downloaded podcast ever when it came out (I think it still is. I recall hearing download numbers of that episode in excess of 50 million). We can assume the number of people who actually care enough to boycott a service would be in the neighborhood of 20 million. Assume 30% of those are spotify subscribers. These are the fans. We're not even dealing with the regular conservatives who just heard about it from Limbaugh and Drudge, some of whom may cancel subscriptions on principle. A drop of 5-6 million subscribers will be significant for Spotify, and likely result in a drop in share prices as well, once Spotify announces their next round of subscriber numbers.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I was talking about the timing of the drop. It's quite clear from the article, given Warner's previous sale of equity, that Warner intended to do this eventually. I was only suggesting that they might have decided to sell at this time because of potential subscriber drop.
There are some really interesting removals on this list. Michael Malice, who is a very reasonable and interesting commentator if unorthadox, stands out to me. This is a long, long way from the days when the debate was about whether Alex Jones was in our out of the boundary of polite society.
I'm glad that Joe Rogan at got vast amounts of money out of this; it makes the situation a bit more tolerable. But Spotify are not behaving like a responsible editor.
I am posting this because there seems to be a large misunderstanding about the Alex Jones episodes being "removed" by Spotify. I am also going to give you a warning. I am going to post a link to Infowars, yes, that Infowars. It is one of the few sources that actually attempts to clarify the story behind the "removed" episodes. If you are a reasonable person, you would take this opportunity to reevaluate the sources you listen to that have been pandering to their readers about how controversial Joe Rogan is and question why these sources weren't interested in actually getting to the bottom of the removed episodes instead of causing sensationalism.
Here it is, according to Alex Jones [1], the reason why certain Joe Rogan episodes were removed from Spotify is because Joe Rogan gets to keep hosting his favorite 100 episodes on Youtube. A shrewd business decision as Spotify gets time to decide how to handle the Alex Jones episodes and Joe gets to have his most profit making episodes still on Youtube. Now, ask yourself, why is it that this news is coming from such a controversial figure? You may call him a racist, bigot, transphobe, xenophobe, or whatever. But you can't deny that the media failing to actually report on the story and the real story coming from Alex Jones just adds credibility to all his other views. Be it Sandy Hook, George Soros, or psychic vampirism.
I will get downvoted for saying this. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
Echochamber effect here I presume. Joe Rogan is doing just fine on Spotify. He can choose not to extend at the end of his contract, go back to YouTube and continue just where he left off.
I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons:
1. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
2. Currently, Spotify doesn't have video (except album cover clips which occasionally show up). I prefer JRE's video format instead of audio. Think of Elon smoking weed on video vs on audio - very different. Seems like Spotify might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know what we will be getting.
3. "Exclusive" deals in the podcast world is bad. Podcasts were supposed to be platform independent audio files. Making things exclusive is going backwards.
4. Spotify is not available in many countries.
5. Spotify's desktop player isn't the best imo. Their web player is only for audio so far, so they need to make major changes.
I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons:
1. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
2. Currently, Spotify doesn't have video (except album cover clips which occasionally show up). I prefer JRE's video format instead of audio. Think of Elon smoking weed on video vs on audio - very different. Seems like Spotify might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know what we will be getting.
3. "Exclusive" deals in the podcast world is bad. Podcasts were supposed to be platform independent audio files. Making things exclusive is going backwards.
4. Spotify is not available in many countries.
5. Spotify's desktop player isn't the best imo. Their web player is only for audio so far, so they need to make major changes.
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