This despicable arbitrary woke driven censorship is bound to really piss Joe Rogan off. Will be interesting to see if they remove the recent highly controversial but fascinating episodes with Dr Malone and Dr McCullough.
If they do, I think Joe will leave Spotify and claim breach of contract.
Spotify has already made the decision to exclude multiple Joe Rogan episodes from their catalog, this is just a decision of where they draw their line.
Numerous affected guests have made videos and spoken about it. Only Rogan and Spotify know why.
We get to find out if Rogan actually has principles or if he just talks a good game. I'm hoping he's not a sellout and this situation results in his move to some decentralized platform. 80% of his audience will follow, and the ones he lost to YouTube will come back.
It'd be awesome if he dragged all his podcaster buddies along with him, and the comics and musicians followed.
Uninstalled Spotify, guess no more jre podcast until Joe moves. If he doesn't, I'm not interested in whatever kind of person sells out like that after taking such a powerful stand on censorship.
To be clear, this isn't Spotify censoring him or anything like that. He basically gave them the ultimatum "either remove Joe Rogan or remove me" and they (100% correctly, IMO) chose the latter.
Is he though? He asked them to remove JRE or remove his catalog. He's exercising his choice to remove himself from the platform because he doesn't want to be associated with Spotify and the people they employ.
Supporting censorship would be more along the lines of asking the government to jail Rogan, erasing his content, etc.
Spotify has actually removed certain JRE episodes from the available catalog as a condition of their deal.[1]
Off-topic but still makes me sad: Spotify removed all episodes of Joe Rogan for me by removing podcasts feature from Ukrainian (and not only) users. I’m a paid user btw. Worst part is that since JRE is free for such large part of internet users, it’s impossible to find on torrents unless it’s Elon Musk or similar. Sigh.
I’m curious what his contract with them stipulates on these matters. As for the employees, they could contact Rogan and either ask to come on the show to discuss what they find so offensive. Joe will talk to anyone, let them have their say and explain their point of view. Arguing to censor his episode history only sends the message that Spotify isn’t a platform for intellectual curiosity and free speech.
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.
I think calling this censorship is like saying Applebee's censors beer because they stock Bud Lite over Old Rasputin.
Spotify is the owner of the content and pulled those episodes for the same reason all mass marketed content gravitates to the bland and benign - bland and benign is easier to sell to a large mass of people.
Joe Rogan was free (not just free, well compensated) as an indy and could have kept his lucrative gig, but spotify dumped a truck load of money in his lawn and he decided he'd rather have that. They even told him up front they were going to remove episodes, and the contract made it clear they could keep going. It's not really censorship when the creator decided to pull episodes to make their content more appealing to a mass audience of people in order to make more money.
>> Rogan, on the other hand, has confirmed that Spotify removed certain shows as a condition of their $100 million agreement with him. “There were a few episodes they didn’t want on their platform, and I was like ‘okay, I don’t care’,” Rogan shared in a recent interview with guest Fahim Anwar.
In this case it’s censorship either way. A few artists are self-censoring at great expense to distance themselves from the Rogan podcasts. I suspect Spotify is concerned with the bad press and the potential for increased self-censorship, which will drive users to other platforms.
So joe Rogan says it’s going to be the same show but at the bottom of the article they list a statement from Spotify saying that the show will be subject to community guidelines. Which means that if he says anything politically incorrect he will be gagged. This is the end of the joe rogan podcast as we know it, the cultural meme/institution. I feel a sense of loss.
>Spotify has the right to choose what is on their platform.
They do only as far as whatever the contract they signed with Rogan stipulates. Since some of his old shows are being censored, it seems that the contract allows for censorship, though to my knowledge the contract has not been made public yet. Seems likely we'll find out.
I don’t think Rogan needs Spotify’s money. If he continues as before with zero changes then it’s on Spotify to send the message to all potential partners wether they will be free to be themselves or if they will be censored. I’m sure Spotify’s shareholders will have a lot to say if editorial/censorship decisions reflect negatively on the bottom line.
Side note: it’s amazing to me we’re even having the discussion of censorship about a self-described liberal. Imagine what Spotify’s staff would do if they tried to land one of the biggest conservative podcasters?
Of course they are free to do what they want. But if they do something unethical, like removing content for political reasons, I'm also free to criticize them and for example demand a refund if they lured me into a subscription by claiming I would be able to listen to Joe Rogan.
Also, you are making wild assumptions about the contract between Joe Rogan and Spotify. Maybe there's a clause in there that they will not only license his shows, but also make them available to their users? In that case, removing the episodes would be a breach of contract.
I don't know the degree of editing that Spotify does. If they are only removing episodes, that's different from constraining Joe Rogan in his creative direction.
Note: I may have been wrong about the reasons for Dave Chapelle leaving. If I'm recalling correctly, that was the reason he originally cited when leaving. But more info came out in later interviews. Seems like he just needed a break from the spotlight.
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