Spotify has been in the news recently with a controversy that’s been going on on its platform. Neil Young pulled his music from the popular music streaming platform (and Apple Music actually trolled Spotify on this), after a controversial episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast had many concerned about misinformation on vaccines and the pandemic. Now, Android Central reports that Spotify has suffered greatly from the controversy, reportedly losing the staggering $2 Billion in market value just in a few days.
Spotify shares drop substantially after Joe Rogan and Neil Young controversy
It seems that Spotify has not been having the greatest of times so far. The popular music-steaming platform’s market value has dropped by a whopping $2.1 billion because of the ongoing controversy with Joe Rogan’s show.
Joe Rogan was accused of spreading misinformation about vaccines, which had Canadian-American singer Neil Young removing his music from Spotify. The artist accused the platform of not moderating its content well enough and supporting Rogan in allegedly spreading false info.
Spotify’s shares have subsequently dropped by 6% in just three days, from January 26 to January 28 (via Variety), following Young’s protest. Additionally, Canadian singer Joni Mitchell has also backed Young and had her songs removed from the platform too.
Before all this happened, an open letter to Spotify signed by 270 doctors and professors urged the platform to better moderate its content and cited an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. The cited episode of the popular podcast was with medical doctor Robert Malone, who had some controversial things to say in regards to COVID vaccines.
Spotify has not been having the greatest of times even before the loss this controversy caused. Its stock price had already dropped earlier this month, as the company reported a 25% fall in share value on January 25, a day before this all started.
Despite that, the popular streaming service stated that it had already removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to the pandemic since its start.
Joe Rogan apologizes to Spotify and defends his podcast show
Joe Rogan from which it all seemingly started has now addressed the ongoing situation in an Instagram post, reports The Verge. He has published a nearly ten-minute video on Instagram, defending his decision to invite controversial guests to his podcasts. He has also apologized to Spotify for the backlash.
In his Instagram post, the popular podcast host details that his show is different than others because it contains conversations, where he sits down and talks to people without any prior preparation or fleshing out his ideas. He states that sometimes, his conversations are based on ideas he has in real time. He also underlines the unpolished conversational style of his podcast is one of its appeals and what makes it interesting.
Rogan also mentions the two podcast guests (Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone) that had started most of the controversy on Spotify; and says that they are “highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that is different from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is.”
Pretty much, he doesn’t agree with these episodes being labeled as misinformation, addressing some of the claims made by the two doctors. Additionally, he continues on to say that he doesn’t know if they’re right because he’s not a doctor or scientist. He basically says that he just sits down and talks to people, having conversations with them.
“Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them whenever I get something wrong. I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth. I’m interested in finding out what the truth is, and I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I’m not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective.”, he adds.
