Spotify published a blog post yesterday that kinda, sorta addressed the issue. Brene Brown also said she's stopping production on her popular podcast, though she hasn't explicitly tied the decision to the Rogan fiasco. Neil Young became the first big-name artist to pull his music from Spotify 'because Spotify is spreading fake information about the vaccines.' Joni Mitchell and a couple of other artists have followed suit. In many cases, that's enough, and things go away. This has become classic platform behavior: The first step when folks are upset about your content is to say nothing, do nothing, maybe eventually issue a statement that sort of decries the bad content but mostly says nothing.

An episode from December was particularly controversial, causing a number of scientific and medical groups to accuse Rogan of 'provoking distrust in science and medicine' and to urge Spotify to 'mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.' Since then, Rogan has continued to do what he always did, which is relatively frequently veer into deeply problematic content and misinformation, particularly when it comes to COVID-19. Here's a quick catch-up on the Rogan controversy: Spotify paid $100 million to make Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, a Spotify exclusive. And yesterday, after days of trying to ignore the issue, Spotify finally had to say something. If you're going to pay Joe Rogan to make podcasts for your platform, you're eventually going to have to answer for what happens on those podcasts.

Spotify and joe rogan