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    Rolling Stones Concert Postponed After Mick Jagger Tests Positive for Virus

    The Rolling Stones postponed a stadium concert in Amsterdam on Monday, after Mick Jagger tested positive for the coronavirus.According to a statement from the band, Jagger — who has said in interviews that he was vaccinated, and urged fans to get their shots — tested positive “after experiencing symptoms” upon arriving at the Johan Cruijff Arena. The announcement came shortly before the show was to begin, and The Associated Press reported that some fans were already in the stadium when the announcement went out. Jagger, 78, had posted a short video to Twitter on Sunday saying he was looking forward to the show.The band said the Amsterdam show would be rescheduled. The next date on its 60th anniversary tour is set for Friday in Bern, Switzerland.The music industry has been moving forward at full steam for the return of concerts and festivals, after two years when live events were shut down entirely or held in reduced numbers. While new tours are being announced regularly, artists as varied as the Strokes, Ringo Starr, J Balvin and Haim have canceled individual shows and even entire tours.Broadway has also rebounded. And at least one show will go on despite the news that its star has been infected: Hugh Jackman, who plays Professor Harold Hill in a strong-selling revival of “The Music Man,” on Monday said he had tested positive for the coronavirus, one day after he attended and performed at the Tony Awards. The producers of “The Music Man” said that the actor Max Clayton, who is Jackman’s standby, would play Harold Hill, the character ordinarily played by Jackman, through June 21.This is the second time he has tested positive; he previously did so in late December, when the show was forced to cancel several dates, just after its opening. More

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    Most Broadway theaters have ended vaccination checks as coronavirus cases are rising.

    A man had his photo I.D. out and in his hand as walked up to the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on Broadway to see “Come From Away,” but no one checked it. The families streaming in to see “The Lion King” were told to have their tickets out and their masks on, but there was no mention of vaccine cards. And the Covid safety officers in neon yellow vests who used to patrol outside “Six” were gone.Most Broadway theaters stopped checking the vaccination status of their patrons last week for the first time since they began to reopen last summer, easing safety protocols the same week rising coronavirus cases placed New York City into a higher risk level.The industry hopes that doing away with vaccine checks — which have also been eliminated at New York City restaurants, movie theaters and other venues — will make theatergoing more attractive, and that the remaining mask mandate will help keep audiences safe as cases have risen, but hospitalizations and deaths remain low.While some patrons welcomed the change, others said they felt uneasy about going into crowded theaters without the assurance that their seatmates were vaccinated, and several nonprofit Broadway theaters continue to require proof of vaccination.“I just don’t feel as safe as I have the past several months,” said Lauren Broyles, 44, an executive assistant from Hershey, Pa., who visited New York to see shows several times last winter but said she had stopped planning a summer theater trip after reading that Broadway dropped its vaccine mandate. “I’m waiting to hear what’s next.”But Michael Anderson, 48, of Hudson, N.Y., who was standing in line the other day to see “Hangmen,” said he thought that while vaccine checks had made sense earlier, he felt they were no longer necessary. “At this point, I’m vaccinated and boosted,” he said. More

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    BTS Performs Live in Seoul for First Time in Over 2 Years

    SEOUL — Elated fans of BTS gathered on Thursday for the K-pop group’s first live concert in South Korea in over two years, an event that was expected to draw as many as 15,000 people — despite Covid restrictions that barred cheering, screaming or singing.“It still feels like a dream,” said Park Hyunjun, 40, a freelance video producer from the city of Incheon, west of Seoul. Outside Seoul Olympic Stadium on Thursday, she held a poster bearing the concert’s slogan: “Of course, nothing has changed between us.”It was the first large-scale gathering of BTS fans in South Korea since the band’s last concert in their home country, in October 2019. The multibillion-dollar act performed live in Los Angeles in November, but for most of the pandemic it has been livestreaming instead.In 2020, the group set a Guinness world record for attracting the most viewers for a livestreamed music concert. The pandemic did not only pause the band’s live concerts: Five of BTS’s seven members have been infected with the coronavirus. They have since recovered from Covid-19.The concert Thursday, the largest approved by the South Korean government since the pandemic began, was taking place amid an Omicron wave that has driven caseloads in the country to unprecedented highs. On Thursday, the health authorities reported 327,549 new daily cases. But the government, which says the country must learn to live with the virus, has been loosening some restrictions.In and around the stadium on Thursday, 750 safety personnel were enforcing virus protocols, muting the festivities somewhat.“Please get moving once you’re done taking pictures,” fans taking group photos in front of the stadium’s entrance were told. “Please keep your distance to prevent the spread of Covid.”Fans’ temperatures were being taken before they entered the stadium. Rapid antigen kits were being made available for people with high temperatures, said the band’s agency, Hybe. And concertgoers had to enter through designated entrances, and during specific time slots, so they would not flow in all at once.Fans were also prohibited from cheering, screaming or singing along during the concert, and they had to keep their masks on, except to drink water. And attendance at the stadium, which can seat about 70,000 people, was being limited to 15,000.“I’m curious what kind of atmosphere there will be with everyone masked and no one screaming,” said Yu Haram, 17, who has followed the band for four years and was about to see them live for the first time.Throughout the pandemic, Ms. Yu said, she had followed the band online, sometimes gathering with her classmates to watch livestreams together. “I’m finally seeing them,” she said, “and I’m nervous.”The concert was the first of a three-day series, with more scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. It was being livestreamed for people who couldn’t attend in person.Yang Ji-woong, 15, said he had listened to the BTS song “Mikrokosmos” throughout the pandemic alone in his room and was looking forward to seeing it live.“I’m frankly a bit worried about Covid,” he said. “But I want to enjoy this moment as much as I can.” 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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    Oscars Will Require Covid Tests for All, Vaccines for Most

    After much internal discussion, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come to an agreement on coronavirus safety measures for attendees of the 94th Oscars, which will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles: The audience of 2,500 invited guests — including all nominees — will be required to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus and at least two negative P.C.R. tests.Performers and presenters also must undergo rigorous testing — but those people will not need to show proof of vaccination, a decision that an academy spokeswoman said on Thursday was in keeping with virus safety protocols on some television sets and return-to-work standards set by Los Angeles County.Under an agreement last year between entertainment unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, production companies (in this case the academy) have the option to mandate vaccinations for cast and crew. But it is not a requirement, and some companies separate productions into zones, with different testing and social distancing requirements depending on how closely casts and crews need to work together.Face covering requirements also will vary, the academy said. Nominees and their guests will be seated in the orchestra and parterre areas of the Dolby Theater and will not be required to wear masks. These attendees will be seated with more spacing than usual. The Dolby seats 3,317 people and 2,500 people will be invited, the academy said.Those in the mezzanine may be required to wear masks, as they will sit shoulder-to-shoulder. Infections are declining rapidly in Los Angeles County, and the academy said it was consulting with government officials, infectious disease experts and an independent vendor, Cosmos Health Solutions, on a policy.Last week, following a report in The Hollywood Reporter that the academy was planning to forgo a vaccine mandate across the board, the organization was pummeled on social media by fans, stars, politicians and others for what appeared to be an effort to accommodate unvaccinated celebrities. Seth MacFarlane, who hosted the Oscars in 2013, was among those who criticized the academy on Twitter.The academy declined to say anything publicly about The Hollywood Reporter’s article, but officials insisted that no decisions had been made.Coronavirus safety protocols have been changing rapidly as infections have declined. On Tuesday, Disney eased its mask mandate for fully vaccinated theme park visitors in California and Florida. This week, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival said attendees (up to 125,000 fans a day in the prepandemic era) would not be required to be vaccinated, tested or masked.According to government data, 1,713 coronavirus-positive patients were hospitalized in Los Angeles County as of Thursday, a 54 percent decline since Feb. 1. Over the last week, the county has reported an average of about 4,100 new cases per day, a decline of 77 percent from two weeks ago.The academy’s decision puts it at odds with some award shows that are scheduled to take place in the weeks before the Oscars, including the Critics Choice Awards on March 13. Joey Berlin, the force behind the awards, told The Hollywood Reporter that everyone involved would be vaccinated. “I can’t invite people to a show where they’re not going to feel safe,” he said.The academy emphasized on Thursday that it would be in direct touch with nominees and studios to walk them through the various safety requirements. More

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    Coachella Will Return Without Masks or Vaccines Required

    When the Coachella outdoor music festival returns for the first time in two years this April, performers will be greeted by a sea of unmasked — and potentially unvaccinated — fans, as the struggling concert industry stirs back to life.On Tuesday, organizers said that attendees will not be required to wear masks or be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which drew up to 125,000 fans a day to Southern California and was one of the biggest music festivals of the pre-pandemic era.“There is no guarantee, express or implied, that those attending the festival will not be exposed to Covid-19,” Goldenvoice, a division of the global concert giant AEG Live, said on the Coachella website.Goldenvoice noted, however, that the festival’s Covid policies may change “in accordance with applicable public health conditions.”Goldenvoice also said that Stagecoach, a country music festival in Southern California, also said on Tuesday that there would be no requirements for guests to be masked, vaccinated or tested. The festival was set to run for three days at the end of April and the beginning of May.It has been a turbulent two years for the concert and touring industries, as a number of events were canceled because of the virus. In the last year, since the Covid vaccine became widely available, organizers have grappled with decisions over whether to hold the events at all and whether to require masks, vaccines and testing.Over four days last summer, the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago ran at full capacity, with its 400,000 attendees being required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. According to data released by the city after the festival, infection rates among the concertgoers were very low.Coachella did not run in 2020 or 2021, and was canceled three times over the pandemic, including a rescheduled date in the fall of 2020.Before the pandemic, Coachella, which is widely seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring business, had put on a show every year since 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It typically runs over two weekends in April.The organizers of Coachella announced in January, after weeks of speculation, that the festival would be back this year. It is set to be headlined by Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West. 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 Defends Handling of Joe Rogan Controversy Amid Uproar

    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