Spotify hits a bum note with Rogan ultimatum

It's about the economics, stupid! Not the music. One can safely say this about Spotify. About the bum note it has hit over siding with podcaster Joe Rogan against troubadours Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and others who have pulled out of the music streaming service because it refuses to dismiss Rogan over his alleged misinformation about the coronavirus.

Spotify is an audio and media streaming service founded in Sweden in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming providers with an audience of 406 million a month and 180 million premium subscribers.

Admittedly, Rogan, who has a daily audience of 11 million, has addressed the controversy over his Spotify podcast, hours after the streaming service announced a ‘plan’ to tackle the spread of Covid-19 misinformation. In a video posted to Instagram, the one-time comedian pledged to "try harder to get people with differing opinions on" and "do my best to make sure I’ve researched these topics". And ended by saying: "I get it wrong sometimes."

Here we have two counter-culture icons representing very different demographics — Young a Grammy-winning artist and Rogan a former reality TV host — who have been going head-to-head over the vaccine debate for some time. Needless to say, Rogan isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Spotify has vowed that, from now on, when Rogan talks about Covid, the service will offer a "warning label of sorts". It helps that Rogan signed a deal with Spotify for a tidy $100 million. It’s all about the money, you see.

While his 11 million, mostly American followers, shrug and say, so what, Rogan must be secretly smirking. From what I have gleaned of the man, being contrite doesn’t become him. People who had never heard of Joe Rogan before are now likely tuning in; people who already believed in his so-often controversial views aren’t losing sleep over music they probably don’t listen to. Followers tune in for Rogan's blunt talk and comedic quips and, debatably, may or may not infer much from his rants about Covid.

Such ranting is not against the law. And, anyway, listeners wouldn’t necessarily change their minds based on a comic’s opinion about something as serious as a pandemic. Right? Hmmm… jury’s out on that methinks. Not too long back equally controversial Fox News’s lawyers successfully defended Tucker Carlson against charges of slander by basically saying the anchor man didn’t deal in "actual facts" and that viewers "should not take him seriously".

The whole affair raises questions that will be with us for as long as freedom of expression exists. Should opinions be censored — ever?

We may, as sentient beings, agree that you can’t shout "fire" in a crowded cinema for no reason at all because people might panic, stampede and get crushed to death. That the risk of dire consequences is greater than the right to say anything, anytime, anywhere.

But what if you’re peddling misinformation during a pandemic that could conceivably put people’s lives at risk? Aren’t these two scenarios comparable? And if not, what should be done to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of disinformation?

As we have seen, since the rise of Trumpism, America has become a nation of conspiracists and disbelievers in a war on information across multiple media platforms and the winners, sadly, appear to be those who would feed disinformation and starve the truth. Spotify would like us to think it is about matters of free speech and censorship. However, there’s that simpler explanation — the money one. After hundreds of medical experts signed recently an open letter to Spotify denouncing disinformation, rather than give in to critics the company has held its ground and, in

recent days, most of Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s music has been pulled from its library. The service says suppressing or dropping Rogan’s podcast would amount to censorship — but anyone who’s paid attention to online content moderation knows that’s farcical. Facebook, in particular during the pandemic, has trotted out that excuse time and again when it ought to have blocked or removed content or users. (Mark Zuckerberg has just seen a net loss of €21bn after a massive decline in users.)

Spotify paid that $100 million for Rogan’s podcast and the views of some ageing rockers past their primes and a few others, does not — from a business perspective — outweigh Joe Rogan’s 11 million listeners. Do the sums.

Talk about rocking' in the free world...