Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#181

Post by mkj » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #117

MBCook wrote: post #48

Spotify has played this perfectly. First they spent $100m on a very controversial figure, just to get an exclusive contract. When he acted controversially they stood up for him, making plenty of people mad and getting others to disassociate themselves from Spotify (Young, Mitchell). Wouldn’t surprise me if they were having some quiet issues with sponsors/ads. Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not…

Spotify also has very little user stickiness. I switched pretty painlessly to Tidal and now I get better quality audio and the artists get more royalties and I don't have to have JRE and Peterson staring at me every time I login.

Totally agree how painless it is switching services - Tidal paying tunemymusic for music library imports was a good idea.

I wonder if that is part of why Spotify started pushing podcasts so hard - they can get exclusive content easier that way vs going with "commodity" music artists which will be available at all their competitors.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#182

Post by hateful » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

ahmed_ds wrote: post #131

I think I speak for the majority of people here. Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim. After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to se…

This describes my experience exactly.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#183

Post by jackothy » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

sinab wrote: post #13

This isn't the first time that JRE episodes have been removed from Spotify: [April 13, 2021] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...

So the title should really be:

"Spotify deletes AN ADDITIONAL 71 Joe Rogan episodes"

Seems 42 episodes have been gone since around the article you posted (March-April 2021). Now 113 episodes are gone in total.

So are Spotify likely to remove more episodes soon when they waited almost a year since the last time? Hard to tell. The pressure on Spotify is probably higher this time.

Joe Rogan fans also seem to have endured the last batch of removals well. Perhaps this batch will anger them more since the "stakes" are higher due to the unusually heated controversy at the moment.

Or perhaps it will all be business as usual in a few months time.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#184

Post by dtemp » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

ahmed_ds wrote: post #131

I think I speak for the majority of people here. Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim. After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to se…

When I heard of JRE many years ago, I said to myself, "do I care to hear the endless opinions of the former host of Fear Factor? Nope." And that was that, never even decided to give it a try with so much other potential content available.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#185

Post by jtc331 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #150

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #75

Quoted post unavailable.

Honestly though, why not start your own site if you’ve been deplatformed? It’s never been easier or cheaper to do. The only roadblock is DDOS protection since Cloudflare has shown an equal propensity for censorship.

What about payments? And web hosting? And so many other things?

It’s never been easier to start a site, yes, but it’s also never been more obvious that the providers that make it that easy aren’t interested in neutrality.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#186

Post by voisin » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

ahmed_ds wrote: post #131

I think I speak for the majority of people here. Before the Spotify deal, you would just see couple of Joe Rogan clips on YouTube and you have sat through maybe 3-4 entire podcasts. You don't care much about MMA or you don't think comedians are that important/hypeworthy as the JRE fandom would claim. After the Spotify deal you just slowly stopped even seeing the clips because for some reason you just don't care to se…

Perhaps you do speak for the majority. I am a fairly heavy Podcast consumer (I run a lot and like to listen to them), and JRE is consistently among my top two (always a battle with the ever great Rich Roll) because of the sheer diversity of guests he has on. I don’t care for MMA or most of the comedians so I skip those but that’s fine because Rogan is so prolific that there will be something interesting in the next few days, max.

I find the controversy about JRE to be massively overhyped like the controversy over Howard Stern back in the day.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#187

Post by DantesKite » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

I'm curious if he said the n-word in any of the episodes.

The Rock just announced on Twitter some news about finding out just how much Joe Rogan used that slur.

News spreads fast in Hollywood circles. Maybe Spotify is trying to get ahead of the curve before any more controversies break out.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#188

Post by afavour » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

I’m struggling to have sympathy with anyone involved in this. Podcasting has always felt like a resurgence of the “original web” spirit to me: anyone can upload, anywhere. All you need is an RSS feed and anyone can subscribe.

Then Spotify came busting in and decided that the open podcasting platform is obsolete and paid Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive distribution of his content. So they’ve dug their own grave here.

Rogan has too. He didn’t have to take the deal that removed his podcast from open distribution and put it under corporate control. But he did. And he paved the way for many others to go down the same path and erode the open podcasting ecosystem. If he hadn’t done it he’d have none of these problems. So he’s dug his own grave too.

I wish both parties nothing but the best in digging their way out of the mess they created for themselves.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#189

Post by smsm42 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #150

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #75

Quoted post unavailable.

Honestly though, why not start your own site if you’ve been deplatformed? It’s never been easier or cheaper to do. The only roadblock is DDOS protection since Cloudflare has shown an equal propensity for censorship.

Every major cloud hosting platform is censoring now (remember Parler?). Same with every major payment service. So it's not as easy as it seems.

Re: Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes

#190

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

The anti-censorship comments here of course resonate with me, but I'm curious about the legality of this. Spotify advertised Rogan and sold paid subscriptions. Now they've unilaterally removed the ability to listen from millions of paying customers, at least some of whom subscribed exclusively for the purpose of listening to JRE. Do these customers have no recourse?