Neil Young won’t change Spotify’s mind about Joe Rogan

Generally it’s arduous to foretell the long run.

Different instances it’s very easy: Again within the spring of 2020, it was incredibly obvious that by paying Joe Rogan a ton of cash for the unique rights to his podcast, Spotify would inevitably discover itself below hearth. As a result of an enormous a part of Rogan’s enchantment — we don’t understand how large his viewers is, however double-digit hundreds of thousands appears affordable — is courting controversy by interviewing the likes of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Positive sufficient, the checklist of individuals criticizing Spotify over its Rogan deal — and the content material Rogan has put out since then — consists of Spotify’s personal staff, who complained that his podcast is transphobic, and 270 docs and different well being specialists, who wrote an open letter saying Rogan’s podcasts have been “mass-misinformation occasions” which have been “frightening mistrust in science and drugs” in the course of the pandemic, for internet hosting the likes of Robert Malone, an anti-vaxxer who’s been banned by Twitter.

And now rock star Neil Younger, who mentioned these docs’ open letter opened his eyes to the “harmful life-threatening Covid falsehoods present in Spotify programming,” has taken his music off the service in protest.

So. How large a deal is that this?

Right here’s one knowledge level: My brother-in-law simply texted me asking for suggestions for a brand new streaming service. Younger’s argument — that by paying for Rogan’s podcast, “Spotify has change into the house of life-threatening Covid misinformation. Lies being offered for cash” — has hit house for him. (For the report, you may nonetheless discover Younger’s music on Amazon, Apple, and each different streaming platform.)

Right here’s a competing knowledge level – an inventory of distinguished musicians following Younger’s lead and pulling their catalogs from Spotify as effectively:

It’s attainable, in fact, that issues might change. Again when Neil Younger was making well-liked music within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, well-known musicians routinely made political arguments, and typically even put their very own livelihoods in danger in doing so. The Nixon administration, as an example, put John Lennon below FBI surveillance and at one level tried to deport him due to his work protesting the Vietnam Battle.

However that stage of activism is sort of fully absent from at present’s lineup of well-liked musicians, who will typically tweet about issues they don’t like however usually go away it at that. Taylor Swift has fought with Spotify, Apple, and a music supervisor who purchased the rights to her catalog, however these disputes have been all about cash and management, not ideology or vaccines.

To his credit score, Younger — a famously cantankerous character who has complained about streaming for years — is clear-eyed about what his pullout will imply: “I sincerely hope that different artists could make a transfer, however I can’t actually count on that to occur,” he wrote on his web site this week.

So except there are rather a lot of individuals like my brother-in-law, count on Spotify to do what it has finished each time folks have complained about their cope with Rogan: nothing.

Spotify is betting billions of {dollars} that podcasting might be a significant enterprise, and Rogan is the largest podcaster on the earth. It must take a lot, far more than the absence of a legacy act that hasn’t launched a preferred track since 1989 to get it to vary course.

Spotify will take challenge with that characterization, in fact. It says it takes all these things very severely, and routinely examines content material on its service to see if it violates content material insurance policies, which it has but to reveal publicly. Right here, for the report, is the corporate’s assertion:

“We would like all of the world’s music and audio content material to be obtainable to Spotify customers. With that comes nice accountability in balancing each security for listeners and freedom for creators. Now we have detailed content material insurance policies in place and we’ve eliminated over 20,000 podcast episodes associated to COVID-19 because the begin of the pandemic. We remorse Neil’s choice to take away his music from Spotify, however hope to welcome him again quickly.”

It’s price mentioning right here that Spotify, like different tech corporations that distribute media, is essentially uncomfortable making selections about what sort of media it does and doesn’t need to distribute. See, as an example, its 2018 choice to take away musicians like R. Kelly — who had lengthy been accused of sexual misconduct — from its playlists however not from the service itself. After just a few weeks of criticism from artists and managers, it deserted the coverage. (Kelly was convicted on racketeering and intercourse trafficking prices three years later; his music stays on Spotify.)

And whereas Spotify usually argues that, similar to YouTube, Twitter, or Fb, it’s merely a impartial platform that connects creators with individuals who need to interact with the stuff these creators make, that argument doesn’t work in Rogan’s case: Whereas he’s not technically working for Spotify, he’s very a lot getting paid by them, to make stuff you may’t hear anyplace however Spotify.

However to date that distinction hasn’t mattered. Once in a while, Spotify will get requested about Rogan, and the corporate solutions with the equal of a shrug. “For us, it’s about having a various voice of individuals, for a worldwide viewers,” content material chief Daybreak Ostroff advised me a yr in the past. “And he occurs to stay wildly well-liked.”

Anticipate extra inquiries to come up subsequent week, when Spotify proclaims its quarterly earnings. Don’t count on a distinct reply.