A debatable episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast can give Spotify its first taste of a great technological cultural war.
The streaming company said Thursday that The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan’s incredibly popular podcast, is its number one podcast in English, just two months after its release.
In its report on Thursday morning’s third quarter of 2020 results, Spotify said, “In September, The Joe Rogan Experience reached [our] video capacity platform and screen number 1 in all of our English markets, while exceeding our audience’s expectations. “
Spotify did not reveal the podcast numbers, which was featured on its service on September 1.
Rogan’s immense popularity, however, is indicated through its figures on YouTube, where it has almost 10 million subscribers. His video with Alex Jones, released on October 27, had amassed more than 8. 3 million prospects at the time of writing.
Spotify’s hit on the touchdown of Rogan’s podcast for his platform is accompanied by complications.
Jones poses a specific problem. In 2018, he illustrated how generation platforms have allowed far-right hate speech and incorrect information to flourish. After a constant protest, he was eventually expelled from all primary generation platforms, adding Facebook and YouTube. Spotify got rid of his podcast.
Jones has notoriously disseminated unfounded theories, adding claims that Sandy Hook is firing a hoax and that a Washington pizzeria amid a network of political paedophiles: the Pizzagate conspiracy.
Jones effectively sued the parents of a boy who died in the Sandy Hook attack and was also forced to apologize for pres presying Pizzagate.
On Rogan’s podcast, which aired Tuesday on Spotify, Jones addressed a wide variety of topics, saying at one point that “many studios show that” dressed in a mask are not done by other COVID-19 people, despite transparent evidence to the contrary. .
In September, workers reported a recent episode with journalist Abigail Shrier, in which Rogan interviewed her about her e-book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Fashion That Seduces Our Daughters. ” Spotify said they believed the episode violated the company’s transphobic policies.
Spotify now doubles Rogan’s account.
Challenged by Jones’ appearance, Spotify said Wednesday that the platform would ban certain types of content, but express it to people.
This is inconsistent with the position of all other generation corporations in 2018, adding their own. Jones’ podcast is still banned on Spotify, and previous episodes of Joe Rogan’s Jones-starring podcast have been removed.
CEO Daniel Ek highlighted this point to the Financial Times on Thursday, saying Spotify’s policies “don’t mean what our podcasts invite visitors to, it’s more about the content itself. “
When asked about the factor the company’s profits call Thursday, Ek went further and seemed to mean that Spotify regulations can’t be too restrictive if he needs to maintain skill like Joe Rogan. He cannot yield to “internal tension or external tension, ” he said.
“We are an artistic platform for many creators and they know what they expect from our platforms. If we can’t do that, then there are other possible options for many creators,” Ek said.
Ek’s position puts Spotify in the challenge of workers and critics that it values volume and expansion over guilty moderation.
Spotify, for its part, aggressively verifies, organizes and grants its content, deals like the one it made with Joe Rogan are a key component of its expansion strategy and is willing to pay huge sums to seal them (it would pay more than $100 million for Joe Rogan, according to the Wall Street Street Journal).
Letting conspiracy theorists and alternative right-wing testaferros return to their platform is a move for a corporate generation in 2020.
Spotify turned out to have prospective profits outweighed the risk.