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

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      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

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      Joe Rogan Apologizes for ‘Shameful’ Past Use of Racial Slur

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      His apology came as listeners said that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast had been quietly taken off Spotify; the company has yet to comment on the reported removals.As pressure has intensified on Spotify and its star podcaster Joe Rogan, listeners reported that the company had quietly removed dozens of episodes of his show, while Rogan apologized early Saturday for his use of a racial slur in past episodes.In an Instagram video, Rogan — whose talk show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is Spotify’s most popular podcast, and has been available there exclusively for more than a year — addressed what he called “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.” A compilation video showed Rogan using the slur numerous times in past episodes of his show; it had been shared by the singer India.Arie, who has removed her catalog from Spotify in protest of what she called Rogan’s “language around race.”Rogan said the compilation was drawn from “12 years of conversations” on his show, and that it looked “horrible, even to me.” The clips, he said, had been taken out of context, which he said included discussions about how it had been used by comedians like Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx, who were Black, and Lenny Bruce, who was white.When posting the clip compilation, Arie said that Rogan “shouldn’t even be uttering the word. Don’t say it, under any context.” In his video, Rogan said that he had come to agree with that view. “It’s not my word to use,” he said. “I’m well aware of that now.” He added that he had not spoken the slur “in years.”This week, Arie joined a small but influential boycott of Spotify led by the musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who cited complaints by health professionals that guests on Rogan’s show had spread misinformation about the coronavirus.In his latest video, Rogan also discussed a clip from another podcast episode, which he said he had deleted, in which he described seeing “Planet of the Apes” at a theater in a Black neighborhood in Philadelphia. “I was trying to make the story entertaining and I said it was like we got out and we were in Africa. It’s like we were in ‘Planet of the Apes,’” he said, adding that it was an “idiotic” thing to say that “looks terrible even in context.”Listeners noticed that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” had been quietly removed in recent days by Spotify. Neither Rogan nor Spotify has given an explanation, and representatives of the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Commenters on Reddit speculated that some of the missing episodes may have contained the slur, although that was unclear.Understand the Joe Rogan-Spotify ControversyCard 1 of 5A brash personality. More

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      Spotify Defends Handling of Joe Rogan Controversy Amid Uproar

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      The company released earnings figures a week after Neil Young and others pulled their music to protest what they called vaccine misinformation on Rogan’s podcast.As Spotify released an earnings report Wednesday underscoring the importance of podcasts to its business model, company officials said that they did not expect their subscriber numbers to be affected by the uproar over accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, had spread misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.The company has been embroiled in controversy since Neil Young removed his music from the streaming platform last week, citing Rogan’s podcast and calling Spotify “the home of life- threatening Covid misinformation.” Joni Mitchell and several other artists and podcasters followed suit amid widespread calls on social media to boycott the company. Officials responded by publishing the service’s platform rules and saying that Spotify would begin adding content advisories to podcasts about the coronavirus.But in an earnings call on Wednesday afternoon, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive and co-founder, said that the company’s expectations of premium users in the current quarter did not anticipate “churn” caused by the controversy over “The Joe Rogan Experience.”“In general, what I would say is, it’s too early to know what the impact may be,” Ek said in the call. “And usually when we’ve had controversies in the past, those are measured in months and not days. But I feel good about where we are in relation to that and obviously top line trends looks very healthy still.”Ek defended the measures the streaming service is taking to combat misinformation, and spoke of “supporting greater expression while balancing it with the safety of our users.”“I think the important part here is that we don’t change our policies based on one creator nor do we change it based on any media cycle, or calls from anyone else,” he said. “Our policies have been carefully written with the input from numbers of internal and external experts in this space. And I do believe they’re right for our platform. And while Joe has a massive audience — he is actually the number one podcast in more than 90 markets — he also has to abide by those policies.”Spotify has been facing pressure over Rogan’s podcast since late December, when a coalition of 270 medical professionals published an open letter criticizing an episode featuring an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, who had been previously banned from Twitter for repeatedly posting misinformation about Covid-19. The letter said Rogan had a history of propagating “false and societally harmful assertions” about the virus, including discouraging vaccination among young people and promoting an unproven treatment for the virus, and called on Spotify to “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation.”The situation reached a boiling point when Young announced he would be removing his catalog, leading several artists to follow, including Mitchell and the guitarist Nils Lofgren. The R&B artist India Arie said Tuesday that she, too, would be pulling her music from the service, citing Rogan’s comments on race. And on Wednesday several of Young’s former bandmates, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills, asked their record labels to remove their recordings from Spotify.Pushback also came from several of the company’s other high-profile podcast hosts. On Saturday, Brené Brown, the influential author and host of the Spotify exclusive podcasts “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” said she would pause releasing new episodes. On Monday, another popular Spotify podcast, “Science Vs.,” said it would cease publishing new episodes other than those meant to “counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify.” In recent days, the podcast hosts Mary L. Trump, Roxane Gay and Scott Galloway have also said they would either remove their shows from the platform or cease publishing.The company reported strong performance overall in the fourth quarter of 2021, including year-over-year growth in both paid subscribers — up 16 percent for a total of 180 million — and monthly active users — up 18 percent for a total of 406 million. It also said revenue from advertisements had reached a record 15 percent of total revenue. Podcasts — Spotify says there are now over 3.6 million episodes on its platform — have been an important part of its revenue strategy.Whether that trajectory will continue is uncertain. The company’s stock dropped in after-hours trading.“Obviously, it’s been a few notable days here at Spotify,” Ek said during the call. He added that “there’s no doubt that the last several weeks have presented a number of learning opportunities.” More

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      Joni Mitchell Plans to Follow Neil Young Off Spotify, Citing ‘Lies’

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      Joni Mitchell said Friday that she would remove her music from Spotify, joining Neil Young in his protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.Mitchell, an esteemed singer-songwriter of songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” and whose landmark album “Blue” just had its 50th anniversary, posted a brief statement on her website Friday saying that she would remove her music from the streaming service. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” she wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”Her statement adds fuel to a small but growing revolt over Spotify, with few major artists speaking out but fans commenting widely on social media. The debate has also brought into relief questions about how much power artists wield to control distribution of their work, and the perennially thorny issue of free speech online.Spotify took Young’s music down on Wednesday, two days after he posted an open letter calling for its removal as a protest against “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Spotify’s most popular podcast, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.He did so after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts had asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31 that had featured Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert. The scientists wrote in a public letter that the program promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines.”Mitchell is the first major artist to follow Young, after a couple of days of speculation and rumors on social media.Young and Mitchell have a deep history together. Both are Canadians who helped lead the singer-songwriter revolution in Southern California in the late 1960s and 1970s.On Spotify, Mitchell is listed as having 3.7 million monthly listeners, with two of her songs — “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” — getting over 100 million streams.While few other major artists have spoken out so far, Young’s stance has resonated widely with fans. Twitter was dotted with the announcements of listeners saying they were canceling their subscriptions, and screenshots from Spotify’s app showed a message from its customer support team saying that it was “getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond.” Spotify has not said how many customers canceled their subscriptions.Tech rivals have also pounced on the controversy, with SiriusXM restarting a Neil Young channel and Apple Music calling itself “the home of Neil Young.”In a statement on his website on Friday, Young reiterated his objections to Rogan’s podcast and took a swipe at Spotify’s sound quality. He also said he supported free speech.“I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship,” it said. “Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.” More

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      Spotify Removes Neil Young's Music After Complaints About Joe Rogan

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      Neil Young wasn’t bluffing.Spotify said on Wednesday that it had begun removing the singer’s music from the streaming service, two days after he briefly posted a public letter calling on Spotify to choose between him and Joe Rogan, the star podcast host who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.Young’s challenge to Spotify has become a high-profile, if unexpected, flash point in the battle over misinformation and free speech online. It also raised questions about the power of performing artists to control where their work is heard.In a statement posted to his website on Wednesday, Young called Spotify “the home of life threatening Covid misinformation.” He added: “Lies being sold for money.”His criticism of Rogan — a comedian and actor who has become Spotify’s most popular podcast host, sometimes speaking at great length with controversial figures — came after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31. That episode, featuring Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert, promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” according to the group’s public letter, which was issued on Jan. 10.Spotify said in a statement on Wednesday: “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic.”“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify,” the service added, “but hope to welcome him back soon.”Young’s most popular songs, like “Heart of Gold,” “Harvest Moon” and “Old Man,” have been radio staples for decades, and have attracted hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify. In his statement on Wednesday, Young said that Spotify represented 60 percent of the streams of his music around the world.Young’s music was expected to be fully removed from Spotify within hours. The news that the service was removing his songs was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.In his original letter, which Young addressed to his label, Warner Records, and his manager, he said: “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform.”He added: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”That letter was removed from Young’s website soon after it was posted, though it drew wide news media attention.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Omicron in retreat. More

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      Wallice, an Indie Pop Sensation from Los Angeles

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      Her 2020 song “Punching Bag” was anointed by an influential Spotify playlist.Name: WalliceAge: 23Hometown: Los AngelesCurrently Lives: In a three-bedroom bungalow house in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles with her longtime boyfriend, Callaghan Kevany, and a friend.Claim to Fame: Wallice (whose full name is Wallice Hana Watanabe) is a singer-songwriter best known for “Punching Bag,” a song about self-deception in toxic relationships; her follow-up hit, “23,” about the perils of living with her mother during the pandemic, has had three million streams on Spotify. Sample lyric: “I’m terrified of the future/ Scared that I’ll still be a loser.” “I credit the pandemic to be able to find an audience, because I think a lot of people had time to listen to music and find new artists,” Wallice said.Big Break: In 2020, shortly after Wallice released “Punching Bag,” Spotify decided to feature the song on its Lorem playlist — an influential list that showcases new artists and now has more than 900,000 followers. “A lot of my friends are indie artists that are coming up in the scene,” she said. “They kept reposting the song, and that’s how I got Spotify’s attention.” The song took off from there and has been streamed more than four million times.Latest Project: In October, Wallice signed with Dirty Hit, an independent record label in London that’s also home to the 1975, an English boy band. In November she released the single “Wisdom Tooth,” a bubbly pop tune that was written the night before she went to the dentist. “I was so nervous,” she said. “I had a recording session that day and was like, ‘There’s no way I can write about anything else.’”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesNext Thing: In the new year, she’ll join the band Still Woozy on tour. “I’m really excited about going on tour, especially since my bandmates are my best friends,” she said. “My boyfriend is our guitar player, and my bass player I’ve known forever.”What’s in a Name?: Wallice went without a name at birth because her parents thought they were having a boy. A few days later, her father named her after Wallis Simpson, the American socialite who later became the wife of Prince Edward, after he abdicated the British throne to marry her. “I really like my name, and I love how it is unique,” Wallice said. More

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      When Did Spotify Wrapped Get So Chatty?

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      This year’s data dump from the streaming music service leaned heavily on contemporary buzzwords and slang — and inspired many, many memes.“In 2021 you did what you had to do.”“You always understood the assignment.”“You deserve a playlist as long as your skincare routine.”No, these phrases were not uttered by a TikTok star or a cool mom. Instead, they are idioms that appear in the annual data-driven marketing campaign known as Spotify Wrapped.The feature, which was released on Dec. 1, shows users of the streaming music service the songs and artists they listened to most throughout the year. Its arrival reliably inspires a number of screenshots and memes on social media. In 2020, for example, people posted about how fittingly depressing (or soothing) some of their most-listened-to tracks were.This time, much of the commentary revolved around the campaign’s use of internet slang (“living rent-free in my head,” “vibe check,” “main character”) and its references to popular topics (NFTs, skin care regimens). In one meme, a Twitter user joked about personal finance using the tone of the Spotify campaign: “Your checking account balance was in the bottom .003%. Weird flex but ok!”Some users also noted surprising revelations about their listening habits. (Who knew they were in the top .05 percent of Doja Cat listeners?) Others found something resembling self-knowledge in the “aura” readings that Spotify generated based on the moods suggested by their music tastes. (One person on Twitter jokingly reported that Spotify had deemed their audio aura as being “fertile and breedable.”)After the feature’s Dec. 1 release, the hashtag #SpotifyWrapped trended for a couple of days, and the memes have been endless. In short, Spotify has collected a lot of data and is now reaping the benefits.Kelsey McGarry, 28, who lives in Los Angeles and works as a grant writer and coordinator for the city’s homeless services, spent practically a whole day poring over her own Spotify Wrapped. She said that the results felt like an accurate read of who she is.“My Spotify Wrapped is very gay,” said Ms. McGarry, who added that her top artist of the year was Charlie XCX. She enjoyed looking back at her year in music but noted that the language in this year’s Wrapped was occasionally distracting.“My skin care routine isn’t even long,” Ms. McGarry said. “Like, what are you talking about?”Rajat Suresh, a 26-year-old comedian and writer, was one of the many people online who joked about Spotify leaning into playful language and buzzwords.via Spotify“In 2021, you were not cancelled,” Mr. Suresh wrote in a meme he posted on Twitter. “Bye Felicia! You got your Fauci Ouchie, and that’s got the whole world shook.” Along with the image, he added a question: “Why does Spotify talk like this?”Ms. McGarry said that for her, those “cringe” moments, where the app seemed to be pulling phrases from a word cloud of popular slang and search terms, were a reminder that Spotify was a corporation and that sharing snippets from its Wrapped campaign on social media was “free advertising.”According to Taj Alavi, the global head of marketing at Spotify, the company is always looking for new and creative ways to connect with Spotify listeners, of which there are more than 381 million worldwide.“We often lean into playful language and user experiences — it’s a core part of who we are as a brand,” Ms. Alavi wrote in an email. “When we consider what the user experience will include, one of the most important factors is connecting with culture, not just making it all about Spotify. So you’ll notice playful references to cultural trends from 2021 reflected in the interactive user experience.”Mr. Suresh said that he uses Spotify a lot, making it “one of the companies that knows everything” about him. For him, though, this year’s roundup reached a little too far.“It just felt like a classic Twitter thing of when the brand is trying to seem like a human or something,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Brooklyn, noting that he’d rather just see the data.That’s not to say he didn’t check his Spotify Wrapped with genuine curiosity. His top artist, he said, was Elliott Smith. More

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      Prince Paul Dives Deep Into Music History

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      In “The 33 ⅓ Podcast,” the acclaimed producer finds himself in some unexpected pairings to explore classic albums from Steely Dan, Janet Jackson and more.When the music producer Prince Paul received a call inquiring if he’d be game to host a podcast for Spotify, his immediate reaction was shock. Why, he wondered, would the company want him to host “The 33 ⅓ Podcast,” its new show exploring individual works of classic albums, based on the Bloomsbury book series?Never mind that Prince Paul is considered a music nerd’s music nerd, best known for his influential studio wizardry with the hip-hop trio De La Soul. His eclectic, seemingly haphazard, career trajectory may not have made him an obvious choice for the show. Though he’s produced albums for Vernon Reid and MC Paul Barman, assembled the horrorcore group Gravediggaz and released albums of his own like “A Prince Among Thieves,” his music credits over the past decade and a half had slowed to a trickle. One of his more-prominent roles during this time: serving as the co-host of “Ego Trip’s The (White) Rapper Show,” a short-lived reality competition program on VH1.Prince Paul, born Paul Huston, didn’t bother asking the Spotify emissaries why they chose him. He said he didn’t want to ruin the moment with too much probing. But the first episode of the show, which debuted in September, illuminates the company’s thinking. Prince Paul welcomed Posdnuos from De La Soul to chat about “Aja,” the 1977 album by Steely Dan, known for its meticulous, jazz-inflected rock compositions. What might seem at first like an odd pairing of host, guest and album is actually an inspired one.On “3 Feet High and Rising,” De La Soul’s debut album that Prince Paul produced, the band sampled the duo’s song “Peg,” not a particularly common, or welcome, move in the rap world in 1989. As the two men banter and reminisce, listeners get a sense of Steely Dan’s influence on De La Soul and how sampling “Peg” made perfect sense for the album they were creating.“What made you pick that song in particular, especially for our first album?” Prince Paul asked.“Just as a single it was a song that we heard and we felt, and it felt good, and it felt happy,” Posdnuos said, remembering how “Peg” just clicked for him when he first heard it as an 8-year-old in the Bronx. “But it was also very rhythmic, like the bass driving. It felt like an R&B record, to be quite honest. You could easily connect to it.”“Did it feel dated or anything at the time?” Prince Paul asked in a follow-up question.“Not at all,” Posdnuos said. “It felt like a classic joint; it’s timeless. I look at that song as a timeless record to now be applied to what we were doing. I didn’t look at it as an older record to now breathe some life into it.”“33 ⅓” is the latest music-focused production from Spotify, joining the likes of ““Black Girl Songbook” and “No Skips with Jinx and Shea” and fitting snugly into Spotify’s larger podcast ambitions. Other episodes in the 12-episode season feature an eclectic mix of albums and guests including Janet Jackson’s “Velvet Rope” and the singer-songwriter Victoria Monét, David Bowie’s “Low” and the rapper Danny Brown, and Metallica’s “Metallica” (best known as the Black Album) and the Hole drummer Patty Schemel.Deciding which albums to feature — there are more than 150 books in the Bloomsbury series — was not “super calculated,” said Yasi Salek, the show’s producer. Instead, the focus is on “what would be really fun to bring to life.” Choosing the guests, however, involved a more thoughtful process. Salek said she looked for guests who knew the artist, were involved in the making of the project or have talked about the album’s influence on them. In the “Velvet Rope” episode, Monét tells Prince Paul how Jackson was a role model for her. “I needed to see that as a young girl just to be able to look at her and see myself,” she said.In keeping with his uncalculated approach to his career, Prince Paul is hands off when it comes to the decision-making process, saying he’s open to whatever is sent his way. Which helps explain the riotous, and expletive-filled, exploration of Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” I & II with Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and Riki Rachtman, co-owner of the Hollywood nightclub The Cathouse (a magnet for heavy metal bands till its closing in 1993). It’s a record that doesn’t quite fall in Prince Paul’s wheelhouse — he opens the episode by letting the audience know that his “knowledge of metal and rock are limited” — but the choice underscores his willingness to be a student.Hosting the show, Prince Paul said, is “forcing me to learn classic records and appreciate music all over again.”That willingness to try something new seems to be the fuel that has propelled him to each juncture in his career — whether that’s producing comedy albums for Chris Rock or a hip-hop children’s concept album about kid dinosaurs, serving as one half of the genre-bending duo Handsome Boy Modeling School or composing the score for last year’s six-part documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X?”“Everybody wants to do whatever’s cool,” Prince Paul said. That’s not his style. “This is what I feel like doing,” he said. “And as unpopular as it is, as nerdy as I am, I’ll just be that, but I’ll be me dictating me. And that’s, I think, the most important thing.”“There’s something to be said about going out there and not knowing where this path will take you,” he added. More