By Travis M Andrews
In one corner was Joe Rogan, the stand-up comedian and former “Fear Factor” host- turned-provocative podcaster.
In the other stood Neil Young, the multi-Grammy-winning rock legend with a lifelong passion for progressive causes.
The battle lasted two days, and Rogan won without making a peep.
Young started the scuffle when he posted a letter to his website, addressed to his manager and an executive at his record label, demanding that his music catalogue be removed from Spotify in response to “fake information about vaccines".
Specifically, Young cited Joe Rogan – who hosts “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast – and has suggested healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated. After catching the coronavirus, Rogan also praised Ivermectin, a medicine used to kill parasites in animals and humans that has no proven antiviral benefits.
"I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,“ he wrote. ”They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Two days later, without a word from Rogan, Spotify began the process of removing the famed rocker’s music, including his best-known hits such as “Heart of Gold”, “Harvest Moon”, and “Rockin’ in the Free World”.
The speed of Spotify’s decision to sideline Young was jarring. So why did the company do it?
The answer is simple: This isn’t really a story about Rogan or Young. It’s a story about Spotify. And, despite public perception, Spotify isn’t a music company. It’s a tech company looking to maximise profits.
The company hasn’t been shy about its desire – in 2019, Spotify announced it was planning to spend up to $500m to acquire companies “in the emerging podcast marketplace”.
That year it purchased Gimlet Media for an estimated $230m. It also spent more than $100m on Anchor, a platform that lets users create and share their own podcasts.
The next year, Spotify spent nearly $200m to acquire the Ringer and its suite of popular podcasts.
And, of course, it reportedly spent more than $100m to acquire exclusive rights to a single show: the extremely popular, rabble-rousing “Joe Rogan Experience”.
“I think it comes down to, just frankly, business,” said John Simson, the programme director for the business and entertainment programme at American University.
“On the music side of things, (Spotify is) paying out roughly 70% of all the revenue that comes in. It goes right back out as royalties. They’re looking for other places where the revenue split isn’t that dramatic… Podcasts were certainly their go-to.”
The plan seems to be working. Spotify reportedly overtook Apple Podcasts last year to become the largest podcast provider.
Young has received an outpouring of support from across the political and social spectrum.
Joni Mitchell pulled her music from Spotify in stand with Young, as did Graham Nash and researcher Brené Brown who said she would stop releasing episodes of her Spotify exclusive podcasts “until further notice”.
Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who have a deal to host and produce Spotify podcasts, also expressed "concerns.
Singer India.Arie was among the latest musicians to say she wants her catalogue of work removed from the platform. Writer and social commentator Roxane Gay also tweeted Tuesday that she had removed her podcast from the platform.
On Wednesday, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed controversy at the company's first town hall of the year, according to a recording obtained by The Post.
"I know some of you feel disappointed or angry or even hurt by some of this content and the fact that it remains on our platform," Ek said.
"There will be a lot to learn from this moment for our company and for me. And it's really important to me that you understand why we did this deal and the impact it's had on our growth strategy and the way we think about our role as a platform."
It’s not that dropping Young won’t inflict any pain on Spotify. Most of his music is more than 18-months old, and older tunes have become popular during the pandemic.
“I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the Spotify platform and stop supporting Spotify’s deadly misinformation about Covid,” Young wrote on his blog.
Whether anyone else will follow remains to be seen. Many of the artists who could take up his battle cry – elder statesmen of rock with large enough catalogues to hurt the streaming service – no longer own their own music.
Then there’s the question of how much impact a single artist can have. The numbers look staggering.
The Weeknd, an extreme outlier, currently garners 86.6 million monthly listeners. Adele has 60 million.
Drake has about 53.6 million monthly listeners. Taylor Swift has about 54 million and BTS has 42.3 million.
If one or two of them pulled their music, how many of Spotify’s 172 million subscribers would actually delete their accounts? How many of its 381 million monthly users would stop listening?
“Spotify is probably counting on the inertia aspect. Once you’re on a particular streaming platform, you’re likely to stay there because you’ve got your playlists, you’re familiar with it,” Simson said. “It just feels scary to all of a sudden have to move.”
Now consider that Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. He usually posts four to five of them each week, and they frequently last longer than three hours.
When Spotify bought Rogan’s podcast, Stephanie Liu, an analyst with the research firm Forrester, told the New York Times, “This is part of Spotify’s bigger bet on podcasts. Spotify is buying not only Joe Rogan’s extensive and future content library, but also his loyal audience.”
To retain that audience, they need Rogan. Plus – and this is key – he’s exclusive to Spotify. Very few musical artists are.
Neil Young’s albums are on Amazon, Apple and several other services. Rogan’s library is only on Spotify.
You don’t need Spotify to listen to Young, but you do need it to listen to Rogan.
“If podcasting is Spotify’s biggest strategic bet, then Joe Rogan is the biggest piece of that,” said Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst and consultant at MIDiA Research. “Other podcasters might be looking at this and wondering, ‘Is Spotify safe for what I want to say’?"
She added that while Rogan’s audience may be large, it’s also narrow. His audience skews young and male. He plays the role of provocateur, beholden to no political belief system. While that obviously appeals to his fans, it’s unlikely those who don’t agree with him are tuning in.
“It’s a lot easier to serve a huge audience of music fans than it is to serve a huge audience of podcast listeners. (A) music genre isn’t a polarising thing,” Cirisano said, adding that while people may listen to various genres of music, they’re much less likely to listen to podcasts across the political spectrum.
Losing an artist doesn’t necessarily mean losing all the fans of that artist. But lose Rogan, and his listeners aren’t likely to switch to Michelle Obama’s podcast, which is also on Spotify.
Cirisano said this could be a “crucial moment” for Spotify, and that Young had forced them to choose between two influential talents.
Rogan has since said he would do better research on Covid-19 and start including mainstream experts alongside guests who espouse more fringe opinions.