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    Why Trump Uses Comics Like Tony Hinchcliffe to Spread His Message

    Like the former president, these stand-ups loathe the news media, delight in transgression and harbor a deep-seated love of cruel insult jokes.The stand-up of Tony Hinchcliffe, a popular insult comic, became an immediate issue in the presidential campaign on Sunday after his racist lines at a Donald J. Trump rally earned immediate blowback and criticism from, among others, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz.As Hinchcliffe has done in the past when embroiled in controversy, he doubled down. On X, he wrote that Walz had found the time to “analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.” Walz didn’t do that. But to the extent that there was a relevant context to Hinchcliffe’s dopey, trolling punchlines, it’s this: They were delivered at a Trump campaign event nine days before the election.There was a time not long ago when people wondered why there weren’t more conservative comedians or why there wasn’t a right-wing version of “The Daily Show.” These questions have always been a little naïve. Comedy has long had a conservative streak, and anyone who ever attended middle school knows that jokes can be as effective at reaffirming the status quo as challenging it.But comedy has become more partisan over the years; late-night TV’s move from neutral Johnny Carson to anti-Trump hosts is only one example. In this election, a forceful new Trump-friendly contingent has emerged, one dominated by male comics, many from Joe Rogan’s orbit. Whereas the biggest names in pop music have come out aggressively for Vice President Kamala Harris, the artists who have provided the most support for Trump have been comedians.Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have made comedy podcasts a regular stop, aiming to win over young male voters dissatisfied with mainstream news outlets. Just in the past week, Vance has appeared on the podcasts of Tim Dillon, a satirical comic who specializes in booming nihilistic rants, and the oddly poetic, bro-ish comic Theo Von. After much public speculation over whether Trump would be invited to sit down with Rogan — the most popular comedy podcaster and the one who gave a boost to many of these comics — it happened. (Trump has also appeared on podcasts with Von and with the New York standup Andrew Schulz, a podcaster so popular he headlined Madison Square Garden this year.)This doesn’t even count Greg Gutfeld, who as Fox’s highly rated right-wing answer to late night has had Trump on as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Joe Rogan Plays Dumb in His Netflix Special

    On his podcast, Rogan indulges his own obsessions and eccentricities. But in “Burn the Boats,” his Netflix comedy special, contempt for the crowd is a theme.On Saturday night, Joe Rogan started glitching.Minutes into his live comedy special “Burn the Boats,” the movements of his mouth did not match what he was saying. Audio went in and out. Certain phrases repeated, Max Headroom-style. Someone as conspiracy-minded as Rogan might wonder: Was this payback for his criticism of vaccines and lockdowns? Is the mainstream media behind this? Aliens?More likely, just boring old technical difficulties. Livestreaming remains a work in progress for Netflix. Following stand-up hours by Chris Rock and Katt Williams, Rogan became the third comic to try this experiment, putting out his first special in six years. You could see the logic of getting him to do it during election season but oddly, he didn’t address the latest developments in the presidential campaign. Rogan made more news last week on his podcast, where he suggested that the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump has been “memory holed” and that Kamala Harris could win. He also suggested that the reason President Biden sometimes seems more coherent is that he uses a body double.Part of the reason that Rogan has built the most popular podcast in the world is that he promises to explore ideas that he says the mainstream media ignores or downplays. Was the Moon landing faked? Are aliens landing in Roswell the reason we invented fiber optics? Does wearing a mask make you seem like less of a man? Joe is on it.And yet, there is one question you don’t hear investigated on his podcast, one relevant to his success but taboo in certain precincts of the comedy world: Is Joe Rogan good at standup comedy?That can be a dangerous one for some comics to touch on because Rogan has become a powerful gatekeeper, the owner of a club in Austin, Texas, and a host who drives viewers to specials and movies. Rogan tends to be talked about as a political or sports figure, a guru for bros, a symptom of a culture rampant with conspiracy, transphobia and misinformation. But his current notoriety is all built on a decades-long career of standup, which provides a contrast with his other media job.Whereas he performs patient thoughtfulness in his podcasts, his standup is frantic, animated, full of unmodulated yelling. His eyes pop out and his face reddens. Midway through “Burn the Boats,” a jagged line of perspiration forms on his tight yellow shirt, making him look like Charlie Brown on steroids. Even if it seems too hammy for a close-up, there’s a cartoonish aspect to his persona that tells you to not take him seriously.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Neil Young Will Return to Spotify, Ending Protest of Joe Rogan

    The rock musician removed his songs from the streamer in 2022 to protest coronavirus podcast episodes, but reversed course in light of the show’s wider distribution.Neil Young will return his music to Spotify, two years after withdrawing it in protest over the podcast host Joe Rogan’s shows about Covid-19, the veteran rock musician announced on his website Tuesday.Without naming Rogan, Young wrote: “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify.” Rogan previously had an exclusive deal with Spotify, which has since been renewed to allow wider distribution of his show.In January 2022, Young drew wide attention by accusing Spotify of “spreading fake information about vaccines” through Rogan’s show, and he gave the platform an ultimatum: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”Rogan, a comedian and actor, has become one of the most popular and influential figures in podcasting with his show “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which features long, freewheeling interviews with guests like Elon Musk, Ye, scientists and fellow comedians.Days before Young’s public letter, a group of doctors, scientists and public health officials asked Spotify to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation, pointing to an episode of Rogan’s show that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic who promoted a theory that millions of people had been “hypnotized” about the coronavirus.Following Young’s protest, the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell also removed her music from Spotify, and the R&B singer India.Arie circulated clips showing Rogan using a racial slur repeatedly on the show. Rogan apologized for his use of the word, and Spotify quietly removed dozens of episodes of his show. Rogan also said he was willing to have “more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones.”In a public statement at the time, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, said, “It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.” The company added a “content advisory” notice to any podcast episode that involved Covid.Spotify signed Rogan to a deal in 2020, worth at least $200 million, that made his show exclusive to that platform. Last month, the company announced a new, multiyear arrangement with Rogan in which Spotify would also distribute “The Joe Rogan Experience” to other podcast platforms, as well as YouTube. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the new deal could be worth as much as $250 million.In his statement on Tuesday, Young didn’t give a timeline for when his music would return to Spotify, and a representative of Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Last year, in an analysis of how Young’s streaming activity had changed since withdrawing his music from Spotify, Billboard estimated that the protest had cost him about $16,000 in royalties per month. More

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    Spotify's Joe Rogan Deal Is Said to Be Worth Over $200 Million

    It was the deal that helped make Spotify a podcasting giant, but has now put the company at the center of a fiery debate about misinformation and free speech.Spotify was already the king of music streaming. But to help propel the company into its next phase as an all-purpose audio juggernaut, and further challenge Apple and Google, it wanted a superstar podcaster, much as Howard Stern helped put satellite radio on the map in 2006. Spotify executives came to view Joe Rogan — a comedian and sports commentator whose no-holds-barred podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was already a monster hit on YouTube — as that transformative star.In May 2020, after an intense courtship, Spotify announced a licensing agreement to host Mr. Rogan’s show exclusively. Although reported then to be worth more than $100 million, the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it.But in recent weeks the show that helped Spotify catapult into a market leader for podcasts has also placed it at the center of the sort of cultural storm that has long engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, over questions about the responsibility tech behemoths have for the content on their platforms.It began when several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show. Then clips from old “Joe Rogan Experience” episodes caught fire on social media, showing him using a racial slur repeatedly and chuckling at jokes about sexual exploitation, prompting Mr. Rogan to apologize for his past use of the slur. A #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for a boycott. And some Spotify podcasters publicly criticized Mr. Rogan and the platform.Spotify declined to make company executives available for interviews. Dustee Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment on the terms of Mr. Rogan’s deal. Representatives of Mr. Rogan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Even in the frothy podcast market, the deal for “The Joe Rogan Experience” was extraordinary. Spotify had purchased entire content companies, Gimlet Media and The Ringer, for slightly less than $200 million each, according to company filings.With tens of millions of listeners for its buzziest episodes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” is Spotify’s biggest podcast not only in the United States but in 92 other markets, with a following that hangs on every word of his hourslong shows. In its financial reports, Spotify cites podcasts — and Mr. Rogan’s show in particular — as a factor in the long-sought growth of its advertising business. At a recent company meeting, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees that exclusive content like Mr. Rogan’s show is vital ammunition in Spotify’s competition against tech Goliaths like Apple and Google.“We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees. But dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” were recently taken down.Lucas Jackson/ReutersAs Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed. It also made its content guidelines public for the first time, said that it would add “content advisory” notices to episodes discussing the coronavirus and promised to contribute $100 million for work by creators “from historically marginalized groups.”The moves came as Spotify faced growing dissension among high-profile creators. This month Ava DuVernay, the film director who announced a podcast deal with Spotify a year ago but has yet to produce any content under it, severed her ties with Spotify, according to a statement from her production company, Array. And Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, said that Spotify’s defense of Mr. Rogan had created problems with her audience, and raised questions about the sincerity of the company’s dedication to minority talent.“What I would like to see,” Ms. Hill said in an interview, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.”A Pivot to PodcastingFor Spotify, the move into podcasting is the culmination of years of strategy to find a business that is more profitable than hosting music, for which it must pay about two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders.The company dipped its toe into video around 2015, but little came of it. By 2018, the year Spotify listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, it was forming plans to pursue Mr. Rogan, hoping to supercharge its market position in non-music audio and to chip away at the dominance of Apple and Google’s YouTube.To make Spotify a player in podcasting, Mr. Ek and his deputies, including Dawn Ostroff, a former television and magazine publishing executive, and Courtney Holt, formerly of Maker Studios, an online video network, set out on a multipart strategy. Spotify would buy audio studios, like Gimlet, and acquire exclusive rights to existing shows. With Spotify Originals, the company would also create buzzy new programs in partnership with creators like Ms. DuVernay’s Array and Higher Ground, the production company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.Developing a portfolio of podcasts unique to Spotify, as Netflix had built a walled garden for video, was a key aim, according to several employees involved in the strategy discussions.“All music streaming services are offering the same plain vanilla ice cream at the same price,” said Will Page, Spotify’s former top economist, who was not involved in the Rogan deal but is a frequent commentator on the digital media business. “The overarching issue is how do you make your customer proposition distinct.”Growth StrategySpotify has greatly increased its podcast offerings in the last four years — a period of rapid growth in both users and revenue for the company. More

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    Spotify’s Ongoing Joe Rogan Problem

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherOver the last few weeks, Spotify has found itself in the cross hairs of critics because of its relationship with the comedian turned podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has been criticized for promoting Covid-19 misinformation — Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had their music removed from the service in protest — and a compilation of video clips of Rogan using a racial slur on past episodes resurfaced online, drawing more ire.Rogan apologized, and he worked with Spotify to remove approximately 70 episodes of his show from the streaming service, with which he has an exclusive partnership. But the incident raised thorny questions about Spotify’s role in vetting the content it distributes, especially from partners it is in exclusive business with. And it also exacerbated issues it has with musicians and songwriters who believe it systematically underpays them.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Rogan’s Spotify square-off, the leverage wielded by musicians and the unwieldy nature of the podcasting business.Guests:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music business reporterNick Quah, a podcast critic at New York magazine and VultureConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Brené Brown Resumes Spotify Podcast Amid Joe Rogan Uproar

    Brené Brown, who had put her podcasts on hiatus last month, returned to Spotify, expressing misgivings about Rogan but noting her contract with the service.The social psychologist Brené Brown said Tuesday that despite misgivings she would resume her two Spotify podcasts, which she had put on hiatus while considering the streaming platform’s policies and responsibilities amid accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.After several prominent recording artists, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, announced last month that they were removing their music from Spotify because they were not comfortable sharing a platform with Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Brown had announced that she was indefinitely pausing her podcasts, “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” to learn more about Spotify’s misinformation policy.“As you may or may not know, I’m under a multiyear, exclusive contract with Spotify,” Brown explained in a message posted to her website Tuesday about her decision to resume her podcast. “Unlike some creators, I don’t have the option of pulling my work from the platform.”Brown continued to express dismay over having to share a platform with Rogan, whom she criticized for past comments, saying that he had made “dehumanizing” comments about transgender people and referring to a 2011 segment in which Rogan laughed as a visiting comedian boasted about “demanding sexual favors from young female comedians wanting to perform onstage” at a club.“If advertisers and listeners support ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ and Spotify needs him as the cornerstone of its podcasting ambitions — that’s OK,” Brown wrote. “But sharing the table with Rogan puts me in a tremendous values conflict with very few options.”Brown is a professor at the University of Houston whose 2010 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the most popular in TED history; her podcasts are produced by Parcast, a studio known for true-crime and mystery shows that Spotify acquired in 2019.After Young and Mitchell removed their music, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, published the service’s platform rules and said Spotify would add “content advisory” flags on podcast episodes about the pandemic. Over the weekend, Ek confirmed that Rogan had removed a number of episodes after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Spotify removed the episodes after the musician India.Arie shared a compilation video showing Rogan using a racial slur in past episodes. That prompted an apology from Rogan, who two years ago signed an exclusive multiyear deal with Spotify reported to be worth $100 million.Brown insisted she was not attempting to censor or deplatform Rogan, but rather was concerned with herself and her own audience, and trying to understand how Spotify sees its responsibilities, adding that she thinks podcasters with a wide reach should vet and challenge their guests.“It doesn’t appear to me that ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ takes any responsibility for the health information that it puts out in the world,” she said, “and I do believe that leads to people getting sick and even dying.”The controversy has moved into the political realm in recent days, with former President Donald J. Trump issuing a statement urging Rogan to stop apologizing.On the latest episode of his podcast, released Tuesday, Rogan called the release of the compilation video “a political hit job” but disputed the notion that comedians should never apologize. “You should apologize if you regret something,” he said. More

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    Fact-Checking Joe Rogan’s Interview With Robert Malone That Caused an Uproar

    Mr. Rogan, a wildly popular podcast host, and his guest, Dr. Malone, a controversial infectious-disease researcher, offered a litany of falsehoods over three hours.Spotify has been rocked in recent weeks by the controversy engulfing its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan.Several prominent musicians and podcasters have left the streaming service to protest what they described as Mr. Rogan’s history of promoting misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. There have been calls for boycotts, and Mr. Rogan issued an apology for his past use of a racial slur and took down as many as 70 old episodes of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” without explanation.The catalyst for much of the controversy was a December episode of his podcast that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic. Hundreds of public health officials and professors, citing the promotion of “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” urged the service to take down the episode.For over three hours, Dr. Malone and Mr. Rogan discussed theories and claims about the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines. The conversation included a false equivalence between the vaccine and Nazi medical experiments, baseless conjecture that President Biden is not actually vaccinated and inaccurate interpretations of government data and guidelines.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What was said“Whatever was in those packages was rumored to include ivermectin. But there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which they’re still there, and Uttar Pradesh is flatlined right now.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. Dr. Malone’s suggestion that Mr. Biden urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to conceal the successful use of the drug ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, does not add up.It is not exactly a secret that Uttar Pradesh has promoted ivermectin as a prophylactic. The state issued a government notice in August 2020 recommending the prescription of the drug to those who had come into contact with Covid patients, and officials have publicly acknowledged its use throughout the pandemic. Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi met in September, and officials in Uttar Pradesh have continued to publicize the state’s use of ivermectin since, even as India stopped recommending it.Dr. Malone was also wrong that cases in Uttar Pradesh “flatlined” as the world coped with the Omicron variant. Though the case count in the state remained low during the summer and fall, it began to trend upward by late December, when Dr. Malone spoke with Mr. Rogan, and topped 23,000 daily cases in mid-January.Promoters of ivermectin often cite Uttar Pradesh’s low death toll as proof of the drug’s efficacy, but experts say there is no proof of that causal link. It is also worth noting that researchers have questioned the reliability of data from Uttar Pradesh.What was saidMr. Rogan: “But I saw the shot where Joe Biden got it on TV and they didn’t aspirate them. They just ——”Dr. Malone: “I don’t know what to say ——”Mr. Rogan: “I’ll tell you what to say — that’s not the way to do it.”Dr. Malone: “Yeah, and was that really a vaccine? Right, then we go down that whole rabbit ——”Mr. Rogan: “That’s my favorite rabbit hole because of the fake set, remember.”False. Aspiration refers to pulling back the plunger of a syringe to check that the needle was not inserted into a blood vessel. The practice and its perceived benefits are the subject of debate among medical professionals. Mr. Rogan and others have wrongly suggested that Mr. Biden has not actually received the vaccine since his shots were not aspirated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend aspirating before administering any vaccines, as it could cause additional pain.Mr. Biden received his booster shot on camera in September, in front of a backdrop that looks like the White House but is actually in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some social media posts cited the use of the backdrop as evidence that Mr. Biden had not actually been vaccinated. In reality, Mr. Biden and his predecessors have used the auditorium for events for years.What was saidMr. Rogan: “So, if they had just done what Sweden had done and some other countries where they didn’t institute lockdowns and they sort of let people just live their lives and make their own choices, they were saying that millions of people would have died?”Dr. Malone: “So it would be, so it seems.”Mr. Rogan: “But time has shown that Sweden actually had a more effective take on the virus.”This is misleading. Unlike many other European countries, Sweden did not impose full-scale lockdowns, though it has enacted some restrictions, including limiting the sizes of gatherings and imposing partial travel bans and social distancing requirements. But Mr. Rogan is wrong to say that Sweden has been “more effective” in curtailing the virus.“Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told The Financial Times in November. “We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst.”Compared with those of other countries in Europe, Sweden’s death rate and case count are indeed in the middle of the pack. Among its Scandinavian neighbors, however, Sweden has the highest death rate.What was said“Those surrounding states in the Palestinian territory does not have that level of vaccine uptake at all. The mortality in the surrounding states in the Palestinian Authority is substantially less from this virus than the mortality in Israel.” — Dr. MaloneFalse. About two-thirds of the Israeli population had been fully vaccinated by the end of December, compared with about a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. The case fatality rate and cumulative death rate from Covid are both higher in the occupied territories than in Israel.What was said“The C.D.C. made the determination that they were going to make a core assumption — if P.C.R. positive and you die — that is death due to Covid. And so the extreme example, just to show the absurdity: If the patient comes in with a bullet hole in the head and they do a nose swab and they come up P.C.R. positive, they’re determined to have died from Covid.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. The C.D.C. has issued guidelines on certifying deaths that detail how to track the immediate cause of death, an underlying cause or a significant condition that contributed to the death. The guidelines do not require counting Covid-19 as a cause of death when someone has tested positive but died for unrelated reasons.Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said on a podcast in January that a car crash victim who tested positive and died would not be counted as a Covid fatality in “most cases.”“Maybe the person comes in and they’ve got a very severe injury and they simply test positive for Covid and there are no symptoms that are likely to be incidental to death,” he said. “But if you had somebody who, let’s say, had chest trauma from the car accident and they were, they’re struggling to breathe already. They get Covid in the hospital and they’re showing some symptoms. There, it could contribute.”Understand the Joe Rogan-Spotify ControversyCard 1 of 5A brash personality. More

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    Spotify Stands by Joe Rogan: ‘Canceling Voices Is a Slippery Slope’

    Spotify is not canceling Joe Rogan.Two weeks into an evolving and far-reaching controversy over its star podcaster, who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, and condemned for his past use of a racial slur, Spotify has faced growing pressure to take a stronger stance about the podcasts it hosts.But in a memo to employees over the weekend, Daniel Ek, the company’s chief executive, discussed the recent removal of a number of episodes and made it clear that it would not drop Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” That show has been exclusive to Spotify since 2020, when the company made a licensing deal with Rogan that has been reported to be worth $100 million or more.“I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” Ek wrote in the memo, which Spotify provided to The New York Times. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.”Ek also confirmed that Spotify recently removed dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” after a compilation video was shared online by the singer India.Arie showing Rogan repeatedly using a racial slur on his show. In a video over the weekend, Rogan apologized and called it “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” though he also said that at the times he made those comments — over 12 years of his podcast, Rogan said — he had believed that they were acceptable in context. Many commentators found that apology insufficient.In his memo, Ek said that Rogan made the decision to remove the episodes, which appear to number about 70, after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Ek also said that Spotify would invest $100 million for the “licensing, development and marketing” of music and other forms of audio “from historically marginalized groups.” What that would entail was not immediately clear. Spotify licenses most of its music from record labels and music distributors, and music from Black artists and other minorities are among the most popular on the platform; Spotify has also promoted minority podcasters with its “Sound Up” program, for example. Representatives of the company did not respond to a request for clarification.Since Jan. 24, when Neil Young demanded that his music be removed from Spotify, citing complaints from health professionals about Covid-19 misinformation on Rogan’s show, the company has faced a mini boycott from musicians, and constant criticism online. Joni Mitchell, Arie and Young’s sometime bandmates in Crosby, Stills and Nash, have all pulled their music. A handful of other artists, like the alternative band Failure, have followed suit, while others have staged protests of various kinds. The band Belly, for example, added a “Delete Spotify” banner to its own Spotify profile page, and explained on social media that for many artists, removing their music from the service is easier said than done.In media circles, Spotify’s stance over Rogan has also raised questions about the responsibility of online companies to police the content on their platforms. In recent years, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have come under frequent attack for the content they host, usually about politics or the pandemic. They have responded with a variety of measures, but tended to avoid labeling themselves as publishers.That stance has been more difficult for Spotify, given its exclusive deal with Rogan. In his memo, Ek doubled down on recent comments denying that Spotify is Rogan’s publisher. In a company town hall last week, he told employees that despite its exclusive arrangement with Rogan, Spotify did not have advance approval of his shows, and could remove his episodes only if they ran afoul of Spotify’s content guidelines. (Spotify released those platform rules for the first time last week; it was not clear whether the episodes that were removed last week violated them.)In his letter, Ek alluded to growing employee discontent about that position, and said he was “wrestling with how this perception squares with our values.”“I also want to be transparent,” he added, “in setting the expectation that in order to achieve our goal of becoming the global audio platform, these kinds of disputes will be inevitable.” More