The case Joe Rogan It has been around the world in recent weeks. The controversies surrounding his podcast not only led to the departure of some legendary artists from the Spotify catalog, but also to complaints within the company itself. And although the streaming service has made public its guidelines regarding sensitive content —such as those related to the COVID-19 pandemic—, the feeling remains that it does not end up being all that can be done in a such a specific case. And that’s because the Swedish company he is playing with an ambiguity that, at least for now, works for him.
As published Los Angeles Times, the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, gave a new example of this during a message issued to his employees. According to two workers quoted by the aforementioned newspaper, the manager assured that the company does not supervise the content of The Joe Rogan Experience because Spotify is a platform through which the podcast is distributed, but it is not its publisher.
What Ek told his employees is not necessarily a lie, but it could be a half-truth. And this has to do with what we mentioned at the beginning, the ambiguity with which the company is handled, at least in this particular case.
According to the report, the businessman stated that Spotify does not approve of the Joe Rogan podcast’s guest list, and that it only reviews episodes once they are posted and available to its more than 300 million users worldwide. world. So, under these parameters, the company has no editorial power other than to verify that the content already disclosed complies with the existing guidelines.
Surprising passivity, right? Especially considering that Spotify would have paid around 100 million dollars in a multi-year contract to have the exclusivity of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Spotify’s dubious editorial stance on Joe Rogan
But on that last point is where Spotify plays its most risky chips. Unlike other podcasts that are produced within the company, through labels like The Ringer and Gimlet Media, The Joe Rogan show does not have the nickname “original”.
If you look at the company catalog you will see that The Joe Rogan Experience He says ‘A Spotify Exclusive’ and not ‘A Spotify Original’. This is in accordance with the agreement between the parties, which has allowed Joe Rogan to retain full creative control over his product. This is what allows Daniel Ek to say that Spotify is the distribution platform and not the publisher of the show.
However, there is also another variable: Spotify has not paid 100 million dollars for each podcast that has been added to its catalog, be it original or exclusive. So it is not very difficult to think that the relationship that the company has with Joe Rogan it is very different from the one that maintains with other podcasts, or with the studies in charge of them. A perfect example of this has been the recent decision to close Studio 4 —also known as Spotify Studios—, which was the Swedish company’s first bet for productions under this format, but which over time became the “trash bin” to which they sent projects they didn’t know where to locate.
What Spotify implies, then, is that not only has it paid a brutal amount of money to have the exclusivity of The Joe Rogan Experiencebut at the same time he has signed a blank check so that the podcaster I can say any nonsense without major consequences. It seems too risky a move to be left to semantics.
A peculiar way of ‘washing your hands’
However, it cannot be said that Spotify’s position is too surprising. Daniel Ek himself had already stated last year that he did not consider that the company should have editorial responsibility for its podcasts. What’s more, he back then used a rather peculiar method to defend his position. “We also have a lot of highly paid rappers on Spotify who make tens of millions of dollars, if not more, every year. And we don’t dictate what to put in their songs, either,” he had mentioned.
We can discuss whether or not what the CEO of Spotify has merits, even because music and podcasts are not monetized in the same way. But the streaming service seems to have mounted a protective shell based on ambiguity from which it will be very difficult to get out, especially as long as Joe Rogan remains his most listened to podcast in the world.