Joe Rogan has broken his silence amid the Spotify misinformation controversy which has seen legendary artists pull their music catalogues from the platform in protest.
Dubbed #SpotifyExodus by social media users, the protest against the spread of misinformation by the streaming platforms gained traction after Neil Young vowed to remove his music from Spotify if they continued to host creators who spread dangerous Covid-19 misinformation – including Joe Rogan.
Rogan’s podcast has come under fire for continually doubting the vaccine and openly encouraging young fans not to take the vaccine. In 2020, the podcast made an exclusive deal with Spotify reported to be worth $100 million.
“Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible,” Young’s letter began. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
“Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule. I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Soon afterward, artists such Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren followed suit.
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Now Rogan has addressed the drama in a 10-minute video posted to Instagram on Sunday night, where he pledged to “try harder to get people with differing opinions on” and “do my best to make sure I’ve researched these topics”.
“I’m not mad at Neil Young,” Rogan said, describing himself as a life-long fan of the singer.
“A lot of people … have a distorted perception of what I do,” he said in regards to recent episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience that featured guests who shared Covid conspiracy theories.
Rogan added that the guests were “highly credentialed … people [with] an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative” and the interviews were “just conversations” which “started off as … having fun and talking”.
“It’s become what it is today, which is some out-of-control juggernaut that I barely have control of,” Rogan continued.
“Often times I have no idea what I’m gonna talk about until I sit down and talk to people,” he said, adding, “I am gonna do my best in the future to balance things out.”
He then apologised to Spotify while thanking the platform for their support.
“I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much from it.”
As users began to unsubscribe from the service in droves, the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, released an official statement setting out the streaming platform’s plan to tackle misinformation.
“You’ve had a lot of questions over the last few days about our platform policies and the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. We have had rules in place for many years but admittedly, we haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly,” Ek’s statement said, adding that content advisories will roll out “around the world in the coming days.”
“To our knowledge, this content advisory is the first of its kind by a major podcast platform,” he added.
Check out Joe Rogan addressing the Spotify controversy:
