![]() ![]() “Ek was pretty transparent about Rogan being a means to an end,” said one employee, who was not authorized to speak to the media. “So to be frank, had we not made some of the choices we did, I am confident that our business wouldn’t be where it is today.”Įk’s approach to editorial content, even Rogan’s, was striking to some Spotify employees, some of whom have told management that the company’s association with Rogan-related controversies was straining their own reputations as well as the company’s. listeners use the most,” Ek told employees this week. Something, or someone, like Rogan, as well as several other podcast production companies that the company has acquired in recent years, becoming a wildly successful player in the audio space in just a short period of time.Īs a result of those moves, “we’re the number one podcasting platform U.S. ![]() It needed something exclusive its rivals didn’t - or couldn’t - have. So in Ek’s telling, to make itself stick out from its competitors and get to the ears of Tesla drivers and other consumers, Spotify needed to stop acting like a blank-space platform and offer something interesting. “For Spotify, at least until podcasting, music has been its entire business.” “What all these other companies also have in common is that they can afford to lose money on music, because it’s not their entire business - far from it,” said Tatiana Cirisano, music industry analyst and consultant with MIDiA Research. Then there’s Amazon, which is a logistics and web services behemoth that also happens to be a music streaming and entertainment company on the side. And unlike Google, Spotify does not make its own phones or provide the operating system to phones, meaning that it would need to partner with those companies, many who have their own competing streaming services. “They had or were working to build their own streaming services with essentially the same content, so there was really no reason for them to integrate our service.”Īpple, for example, a peer in both the music and podcasting space, can offer discounts on subscriptions to its services or longer free trials because it makes the majority of its revenue through selling iPhones. “In 2019, our music and podcasting catalog was not that differentiated, and because of this we were locked out of deals with some critical hardware partners like Amazon, Google, and even Tesla,” Ek said. “There are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive,” Ek told employees, according to audio obtained by the Verge.īut as Ek told it, the exclusive deal with Rogan and others gave the platform a key lift. It is Spotify’s own corporate ambition to dominate the audio business - and keep investors happy - by reaching 1 billion users and 50 million “creators.”ĭuring a Wednesday town hall, some Spotify employees wrangled with executives over management’s persistence in defining Spotify as a platform rather than a publisher, a dichotomy the company has awkwardly straddled by becoming the exclusive distributor of Rogan’s show while agreeing not to editorially supervise it, apart from removing episodes that might violate generic company content guidelines.Īddressing employees, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek‘s remarks suggested that he wasn’t particularly personally fond of Rogan’s show. “So at one moment he may be discussing elk hunting or MMA fighting, then suddenly he’ll push the right-wing lie that Biden is trying to stop the public from accessing monoclonal antibodies.”īut what’s become increasingly clear in recent weeks is that the source of Spotify’s headaches isn’t Rogan. “I’m trying to highlight that he regularly and without consequence veers into harmful lies about our response to the current pandemic,” among other issues, said Alex Paterson, senior researcher at Media Matters. (Rogan did not respond to a request for comment.) ![]() Rogan also has many passionate detractors, and the liberal watchdog Media Matters employs a researcher who has listened to hundreds of hours of his shows to document the most controversial portions. ![]() He sometimes hosts controversial (and often right-wing) figures, but can boast many fans and defenders across the ideological and cultural spectrum, including liberal host Jon Stewart and controversy-averse actor Dwayne Johnson. After striking a deal said to be worth roughly $100 million to make his show exclusive to Spotify in 2020, “The Joe Rogan Experience” has become Spotify’s most popular podcast in 93 markets. Amid this furor, Rogan has remained the towering central figure who seemingly everyone loves - or hates - to argue about. ![]()
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