Obviously, they view podcasts as their differential advantage over competitors. The CEO said as much to employees just this past week
They just removed 70 plus Rogan podcasts. Reason not stated yet, but two things stand out:
1) a different type of artist protest -- NOT Covid but India Arie pulled her music saying she didnt want to "fund" Rogan and then posted a compilation of him using the N word. Her other comment makes it seem like a MONEY fight with Rogan as an easy target now because she said this ""They take this money that's built from streaming, and they pay this guy $100 million, but they pay us like .003% of a penny," Arie said on Instagram. "Just take me off. I don't want to generate money that pays that." BUT, by "pays that" she seems to be saying that fund him using the N word.
2) the episodes that were removed "involved other controversial commentators, including Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Owen Benjamin and Canadian writer Gavin Miles McInnes." . . . all white, alt-right figures with racism controversies
NO FORMAL STATEMENT FROM SPOTIFY
Rogan, much to his credit and just like with the Covid controversy, has been contrite and apologized and basically handled the controversies perfectly. On the race issue he said this:
"In his apology today for Arie’s clips, Rogan responded via Instagram, calling it “The most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.” Rogan said the video consisted of “out of context” snippets from “12 years of conversations” on his show.
“It looks f–king horrible. Even to me.”
“I know that to most people, there is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, nevermind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now. I haven’t said it in years. Instead of saying ‘the N-word,’ I would just say the word. I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
Rogan’s defense was that he would often use the word in the contex of discussing comics of the past who used the word, like Lenny Bruce and Paul Mooney.
“It’s a very unusual word, but it’s not my word to use,” he continued. “I never used it to be racist, because I’m not racist, but whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say ‘I’m not racist,’ you’ve f–ked up, and I clearly have f–cked up.”
He also addressed a bit in the clips wherein he referred to a black neighborhood as “Planet of the Apes,” after going to see the movie with friends in Philadelphia.
“I was trying to make the story entertaining,” Rogan said. “I did not, nor did I ever say that black people are apes, but it sure f–king sounded like that.”
“It wasn’t a racist story, but it sounded terrible.”
