Front Burner - Why Spotify chose Joe Rogan over Neil Young

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Neil Young's music is being pulled from the streaming platform Spotify. That's after he told the platform to either remove his music, or take action on vaccine misinformation — specifically from podcast host Joe Rogan. Spotify ultimately sided with Rogan, saying Wednesday it would begin removing Young's catalogue but that it hoped he would come back soon. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users," the company said in a statement. "With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators." The Joe Rogan Experience is the world's biggest podcast, famous for its long-format, wide-range interviews with eccentric and sometimes controversial guests. But its host has come under fire for his relentless questioning of widely shared scientific agreement about COVID-19. Nicholas Quah, podcast critic for Vulture and New York Magazine, joins us to explain the rise of vaccine skepticism on Rogan's show — and the reasons why Spotify may have taken this side.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. If you have been meaning to revisit this Neil Young classic, you won't be able to do it on Spotify. His entire catalog is being taken off the platform.

On Monday, a letter from Young briefly appeared on his website. And it demanded that Spotify remove his music unless the platform took action on vaccine misinformation. And specifically, Joe Rogan. Because when it comes to the podcast host's relentless questioning of the science, Young has seen enough. The Joe Rogan experience has been exclusively on Spotify after he signed a deal for a reported 100 million US dollars in 2020. And since then, he's encouraged young and healthy people not to get vaccinated.

If you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. Claimed Alex Jones was right about conspiracy theories. Especially now when people are talking about actual microchips being injected into your arm to see if you have COVID-19. He's like, I fucking told you, Joe Rogan. Dedicated an entire episode to ivermectin.

So if you're in a high risk area, you take it and it'll protect you from infection. Prevent you from contracting. And claimed mRNA vaccines aren't really even vaccines. Not only that, it's not really a vaccine in the traditional sense. This is really gene therapy. It's a different thing. All while some of his millions of fans have rushed to his defense. Neil Young's trying to censor Rogan Joe. Psycho's getting old.

Today, the saga of vaccine skepticism on the world's biggest podcast and why Spotify hasn't stepped in to stop it. I'm joined by Nick Kwa. He's a podcast critic for Vulture and New York Magazine. And we spoke yesterday just before we learned Spotify agreed to remove Young's music. Hey, Nick, great to have you on the show. Hey, how's it going? It is going great. Thank you. So Neil Young wasn't the first to raise concerns about Rogan this month. Two weeks ago, 270 medical professionals, public health experts, and science educators

penned a letter demanding that Spotify take action against misinformation and Rogan in particular. And why do they think he's such a threat to public health? Oh, okay. So where do we begin? So, all right, I think the letter itself was largely worded around sort of pressuring Spotify to develop and enforce a misinformation policy in general. event, and I believe sort of the focus of the letter, was this episode in last December on the Jorgen experience where he brought on this man named Dr. Robert Malone, who's worked on the mRNA vaccine and who went on the show. And he's kind of a rising star in misinformation circles

or the sort of quote-unquote alternate reality circles. These mandates of an experimental vaccine are explicitly illegal. They are explicitly inconsistent. It's been going around basically arguing against vaccines and raising all sorts of unfounded questions about it. And so the problem here is that the Virginia Rogan experience, as you mentioned, is probably the most listened podcast in the world. It is definitely the most streamed podcast on Spotify. And Rogan has a history at this point of either bringing on or platforming extreme anti-vaxxer sort of skeptics. And of course, he's an extremely influential figure. So this is becoming a very thorny issue for Spotify. And as you've mentioned, to a point that Neil Young has decided to take matters into his own hands.

In a now-deleted letter, Young says he is cancelling all his music availability on Spotify as soon as possible because the platform is spreading false information about vaccines. They can have Rogan or Young, not both, he says. Tell me a little bit more about what happened in this Robert Malone episode that spurred this first letter from all of these experts and now Neil Young. Right. So the December episode in particular, you know, he went on and basically did his dog and pony show that he does when he goes on and like any other sort of far right podcast. And he said the same thing when he went to Fox News. One particular moment of Sadat was he kind of described large swaths of populations complying with the government's directive to take COVID vaccines as mass formation psychosis.

Basically drumming up or contributing to this conspiratorial thinking that COVID's either manufactured or being taken advantage of by the government to increase control over its populations. government to, you know, increase control over its populations. And you mentioned Rogan's own messaging about vaccines. And we've talked a bit on the show before about how he's sort of this, like, uber libertarian guy. So talk to me a bit about his initial thoughts about whether he and others should take a COVID vaccine. Yeah, this one's a bit more tricky to sort of parse out. So initially, I think one could describe his position as being sort of generally vaccine skeptical. I mean, I think in many ways, he remains not necessarily anti-vaccine. You should get vaccinated if you feel like my parents are vaccinated. I've encouraged a lot of people and people say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated? I've said, yeah, I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated.

I do. I do. But if you're like he's talked about, like not believing that he himself needs to take it or healthy young men and people to take it, because, you know, if you if you get it, you can probably like survive it and earn your own natural immunities. So on and so forth. Rogan, you know, he does come from this libertarian tradition, it seems. He seems very much of that world of people who prefers to, quote-unquote, do their own research, who generally has a skepticism about authorities, governments, or otherwise telling him what to do without, you know, obtaining information himself and, like, running his own analysis on it,

however that may take shape. He generally already has an interest in people who are largely considered outside of the mainstream fringe figures. I mean, he's brought on Alex Jones in the past and seems generally amenable to him as a person and

generally open to listening to his theories. I love that guy. That fucking guy is right way more than he's wrong. Oh my God, yes. Way more, especially now when people are talking about him. And so it just feels like he's drifted deeper and deeper into this territory. There was also a kind of a turning point in his own personal narrative of COVID. He contracted COVID last year,

after which he seems to be plugged into a network of people who very much bought into the take the ivermectin and or monoclonal antibody treatment, which is basically anything but the vaccine. I got up in the morning, got tested, and turns out I got COVID. So we immediately threw the kitchen sink at it. All kinds of meds, monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin z-pack uh prednisone everything uh and i also got an nad drip and i should mention i say that the ivermectin uh route has been largely advised against by just about every health agency in the world and it's been proven to be quite dangerous for people yes yeah exactly uh but it's also, I guess, also worth

saying that he seems interested in, quote unquote, alternative forms of medicine. And so there's an intellectual universe that he seems to have that generally kind of puts him in a position where he can keep believing in the things that he keeps believing in. yeah and the politics being libertarian and sort of anti-government mandate he's gone after Canada specifically calling them uh authoritarian with COVID before and speaking of Canada this really came to a head in December when Rogan said he was canceling a live show in Vancouver. And this happened a couple weeks after Canada announced plans to expand vaccination requirements for travelers into the country. So why did Rogan say he wasn't willing to get vaccinated? Because he is not vaccinated. is not vaccinated. Right. So I should say that, you know, earlier on in a pandemic, he did seem open to getting vaccine. I believe there's been mentioned and there's been reports that he at some point was interested in getting the J&J vaccine and then a sort of cascading sequence of logistical scheduling situations led him to like not get it. And then at some point,

the government advised against getting J&J vaccine because it's been found to be slightly less effective than um pharma donut that's available here since he contracted covet uh he seems to have doubled down on his stance of not needing to take the vaccine because he has uh natural immunity quote unquote um obviously there's a lot of problems with this particular way of thinking about the science with the vaccine mandate situation with his show, that I believe that was the first time he has sort of explicitly said out loud that he's not vaccinated and that he's gotten quite sort of incensed

about the need for him to get vaccine to do whatever he wants. Again, at the end of the day, I still feel like he's generally not necessarily anti-vaccine. feel like he's like generally not necessarily anti-vaccine. I think he's more working from a position of like, I hate that people are telling me to get the vaccine.

That, that again falls from his libertarian kind of identity. Wake up folks. Wake up. It's coming. If we give into this, we give into vaccine passports and having an app on your phone that shows everything you're doing in terms of your medical history. And they've even offered people extra credit. There was an article on Yahoo.

I think the millions of people who listen to Rogan, I'm not sure if you'll agree with this or not, have come to expect a certain amount of far-out theories and even false info from him. Maybe not everyone that listens to him, but perhaps a lot. I mean, as you mentioned, he's had Alex Jones on three times. Since he has continued questioning COVID science while millions of people have died worldwide, how has his audience reacted to his messaging around this? So again, that's kind of a uh question to answer because it's hard to you know get a clear

sense of any large population without like a polling right oh you mean you can't you can't figure that out for me yeah you know it's a surveillance issue um the way that i the way i try to monitor this is to see whether this will cause an effect on on second or third order stuff which is to say does spot Spotify make a move on it? Will advertisers make a move on it? Will there be any indication that the listenership is suffering as a result of these views and the stuff he's done in the past? Everything kind of points to the answer still being not at the moment.

It seems that things are pretty much the same. So essentially there are no consequences so far. It does not seem like there is, at least from the audience side. I will also say that, you know, a lot of people who listen to him, and I have a lot of people in my life who listen to him, generally kind of take him with a grain of salt to begin with. He is ultimately a person who doesn't just, you know, run episodes with fringe figures uh anti-vaxxers uh and so on so forth you know he brings on comedians he brings on people who have a show

to promote uh so on so forth he continues to be a very kind of very good and accomplished broadcaster but who knows like if you're exposed to that kind of mindset and psychology over time uh you too might begin to uh shift your thinking more towards his direction over time. Yeah. Although look, like, you know, he's got this massive platform, right? People who tune into him for other reasons, too, like you just talked about. And I guess he's also had guests that support the science of vaccines on, you know, he talked to Australian broadcaster Josh Zeps, although they fought as Rogan googled stats. Pretty funny exchange.

No, no, no. I don't think it's true that there's an increased risk of myocarditis from people catching COVID that are young versus increased risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. No, there is. There's both. Well, let's look that up because I don't think that's true. Myocarditis is more common after COVID-19 infection

than vaccination. But is this with children? With children is the issue. Well, no, we were talking about 15-year-olds. Well, we're talking about young children. Male child. 12 to 17. 12 to 17, more likely to develop myocarditis

with three months of catching COVID at a rate of 450 cases per million infection. This compares to 67 cases of myocarditis per million at the same time following their second dose of Pfizer. Yeah, so you're about eight times likelier to get myocarditis from getting COVID than from getting the vaccine.

That's interesting. That is not what I've read before, but also it's like, even when we're reading these... And he spoke with CNN correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And how has Rogan tended to react to those sorts of voices on the show? Yeah, so I mean, it is that's an important thing to point out that he does occasionally bring on people who do come in to sort of argue for vaccines or, you know, challenge him on his views. But, you know, he does end up at the end of the day, kind of not really kind of

being amenable to pro-vaccine views. Yeah. Yeah. He believes that he is open-minded and that's very, and you know, to an extent, maybe he is, but he has his views and he doubles down and he looks out on the rest of the world, seeing how they have doubled down on their views for vaccines and kind of feels more right in his position. And so we are in a tricky impasse in terms of any, any form of persuasion, influence, or argumentation to get him to shift his views to the better in the situation. I love you. entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and

podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. That letter that we talked about at the beginning of this conversation from the 270 medical professionals who demanded that Spotify make this clear misinformation policy so that it could be enforced against Rogan and others. I understand Spotify actually already has a misinformation policy. And so what does it say?

Yeah, so again, this is tricky territory, like the rest of the story. So Spotify does already have a misinformation policy in the sense of the story so spotify does already have a misinformation policy in the sense of their they do attempt to scrub or pull episodes that contain misinformation and sort of harmful uh content that distributes over their platform it's kind of an expansion or a parallel to their hate speech policy in a sense of you know there's a bunch of content moderation and policies implementations already have in place it It's been reported, I believe in Variety and a number of other outlets

when the letters from medical professionals came out that Spotify has indeed taken action and enforced the policy in the past, pulling off episodes on the platform that have violated their misinformation policy. So to a sense, they do have the policy and they are taking action on it. The difference of course, is that Joran Experience is a show that Spotify pays for,

that they finance, that they exclusively distribute. It is, for all intents and purposes, a Spotify published show. And my sense or my impression, of course, it's hard to say for sure because Spotify won't sort of highlight, obviously, the episodes they pulled off. Then guessing that the policy is largely enforced on shows that are distributed as third-party content over the platform,

which is to say shows that Spotify does not publish but allow to come on the platform as a distribution point. So this is the difference, right? The Jorgen Experience is a Spotify-published show that probably is not subject to the same standards as third-party podcasts that go over the platform. And so we're in a territory where Spotify seems to be willfully publishing misinformation.

That does seem like a bit of a cop-out. I would imagine a lot of people are probably thinking that right now. Well, here's the major cop-out. The cop-out is that Spotify hasn't said anything explicitly or publicly about Jorgen or about misinformation on its platforms. We're in the umpteenth cycle of another Jorgen misinformation headline, and they have not

said anything about it publicly. And that is just... At this point, I feel as irresponsible. Because this is their show, this exclusive deal to host it, do you think that they have even more responsibility to rein him in here

because he's like the star of their platform? Sort of like, I guess, Anderson Cooper or like Chris Como, formerly of CNN? Yeah, okay. So there is this sort of moral question about what your responsibility is as a publisher i think that the area where this gets a little tricky is that yeah even if spotify does take um action uh against uh the jorgen experience and and decides to you know sever their deal pull

him off the platform whatever you know we're entering a territory of like kind of weird uh free speech concerns like this is more of an issue here in the United States in terms of there's a bigger, louder vociferous tradition of free speech here, whatever the cost for the most part. And it is chilling to me that tech platforms have this much power and that the nexus of control and power here lies with Spotify as opposed to the culture or the government or being these sort of arbiters of what is acceptable speech within the public sphere or not. And so that's a little bit of what is tricky about this as well. I mean, this is the same conversation you have about Facebook, about YouTube. Exactly. These companies now have the power to decide what is appropriate. And is that the kind of society that we want to live in

and you know the other thing i think about is is like i know people who throw on obvious conspiracy podcasts for like fun for entertainment like watching ancient aliens like that bonkers history channel show right and like should that should they not be on Spotify, you know? Yeah. I'm curious. I'm sort of wondering about the extent to which I should show my own cards here. I, generally speaking, I'm like afraid of anything that sort of like, that ends up being sort of a chilling effect on free speech, right?

With some ancient aliens, you know, at some point it feels like the bar is, is this banal or is this actively dangerous, right? It feels like the bar is, is this banal or is this actively dangerous, right? And the adjudication of that bar is super sticky, super politicized, and it falls from a larger question about the structures of power, who gets to, you know, arbitrate that question. And, you know, the larger context here is that we also exist in a time where there's, you know, tremendous decline in faith institutions, in part for reasons that are perfectly justifiable in the sense of institutions have, you know, filled many sections of the populations

over and over again. But at the same time, it seems that the sort of general shift towards interest in alternate slash conspiratorial forms of thinking, you know, it feels like intimately tied into that. And it feels like this sort of, everybody is kind of searching

for their own universes of truth in a time of chaos. like intimately tied into that and it feels like this sort of everybody is kind of searching for their own universes of truth in a time of chaos and and this is this is kind of the shakes of what happens as a result of that there is a town in north ontario i guess maybe i'm saying this as a Canadian, and I just want to end this conversation where we started with Neil Young, who is massive. He's probably one of the greatest living songwriters, and he survived polio as a child, so of course he knows what vaccines can do.

Do you think his boycott of Spotify will do anything to make them take action against Rogan to push them? Here is when my pure unadulterated citizen is going to come out. Are we going to have an argument about whether or not Neil Young is massive? Neil Young is massive? Well, somewhere in Spotify's data framework, there is a number that compares Neil Young's listenership to Joe Rogan. So that question is actually answerable. It's just that I don't think

that anybody's going to answer it to us. I will say that Neil Young's opposition and the sort of specificity of his opposition, basically, it's either Rogan or me, does feel like some sort of step forward in this situation. He is by far, I think, the biggest artist, a person with power in the world within which Spotify operates, that has taken a very specific targeted stance and basically issues an ultimatum. Now, I also think that Neil Young is, you know, he's a necessary but kind of insufficient ingredient in whatever movement can exist to

pressure Spotify to either take action or just be a bit more public or a bit more transparent. But Rogan is extremely valuable for Spotify. As I mentioned earlier, it is the most streamed podcast on the platform. It is also the era head of Spotify's emerging podcast advertising business. They have paid a lot of money for Joe Rogan and I do not have any doubt whatsoever that Rogan is producing a lot of value and money for Spotify.

And so New Young alone, regardless of the legend that he is and how much of a follower he is, I do not think that he alone would be enough to sort of push Spotify on the matter. Now, if he sort of inspires other sort of powerful artists. All of a sudden, like Adele and Taylor Swift. I don't know why I chose those two, but saddle up alongside him. Can you tell what's on my playlist right now? Those are good picks uh yeah i mean there's there's also complexity in like who can or who's in a good position to join whatever movement this is you're probably not musicians who are younger

who are actively need spotify to sort of grow their value in careers but there's a lot of you know living older uh powerful musicians who um still who still derive value from the back catalog. And it has been reported that music streaming platforms like Spotify do drive a tremendous amount of value from back catalogs as opposed to new music. And so there is a pathway

here for some sort of movement. The question is, will enough people be interested enough to join that movement? And again, my pure unadulterated cynicism, I doubt it. Okay. Nick, thank you very much for this. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go today, I just want to read you a statement Spotify gave The Hollywood Reporter

about removing Neil Young's music. Quote, We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place, and we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify,

but hope to welcome him back soon. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening we'll talk to you tomorrow for more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts