HS analysis Joe Rogan, who spreads the vaccine scarecrow, is a money shampoo for Spotify, and that’s why Spotify needs to support him – The dispute is about bigger money

With either side are you in the streaming dispute over Spotify?

Maybe you like a musician Neil Youngia, which discontinued production in protest of Spotify ‘s submission Joe Roganin spread the vaccine and coronary viruses in its popular podcasts?

Or do you belong to a camp that thinks Rogan and his interlocutors are allowed to tell even false information because that’s how everyone in the public debate market gets their voices heard?

Read more: Neil Young no longer rocks at Spotify

Neil The dispute between Young and Spotify is a typical cultural war between two opinions. At the same time, it makes you think about Spotify’s position in the media field.

A journalist defending Spotify in A-studio Ivan Puopolo pondered Monday night whether Neil Young was trying to influence Spotify’s editorial decision-making against the rules of journalism.

The reflection was strange in that Spotify has no editorial or editor-in-chief, and no legal liability like traditional media for the disinformation conveyed by Rogan.

And that is exactly the difference we should be talking about. One actor has no responsibility, the other has. The difference may seem small, but to many this is exactly the difference can solve the future of communication and the Internet.

Facebook and Twitter have found that the most traffic on social media is generated by emotional and identity-based content.

For example, the fact that a well-known politician insults another in a way that causes a strong for or against reaction.

This creates topics of conversation that are also hotly chased by the traditional media. They once bring good traffic to your website.

Traditional media are already quite good at inciting confrontations, but this is limited by the editor-in-chief’s responsibility for the accuracy of the content produced and possible liability for damages.

The media companies have not had a similar responsibility for the content produced by third parties.

In the United States, the policy is based on controversial Section 230 legislation.

If you think of Google, Facebook as a publisher, they have a huge competitive advantage over traditional media publishers who are held accountable for the false information they print.

In the American debate, Section 230 is often cited as one of the main reasons why the founders of the platform giants became the owners of hundreds of billions while obscene talk and fake news filled the Internet.

Streaming channel HBO The Good Fight in the law drama is a great example of this.

In the third episode of the fifth season of the series, false allegations of child sexual abuse have been made online about the owner of a local bike repair shop. The workshop has gone bankrupt as a result of the allegations.

It is disputed in the court whether the platform company which provided such information, which collects billions in advertising revenue, is liable and whether Section 230 should be scrapped for greater fairness.

Spotify’s Joe Rogan conversation is directly linked to this bigger theme.

In Founded in 2006, Spotify has long been a company of great promise.

Spotify has 380 million customers in 184 countries and is the market leader in music streaming with a market share of 30 percent, according to Yahoo Finance.

Apple Music accounts for 15 percent, Amazon for 13 percent, Tencent for 13 percent and Google for 8 percent.

Compared to large technology companies, Spotify is still a mouse.

It has a market capitalization of more than $ 30 billion, roughly an estimated one-hundredth of Apple’s value, or as much as Apple made a net profit in 90 days, according to the latest published interim report.

Coronary pandemic beginning in the winter of 2020, Spotify’s stock price plummeted from over $ 150 to a low of $ 109. In the spring of 2020, the price began to rise sharply.

In part, it was a general rise in exchange rates after the worst interest rate panic passed. Prices for streaming services also rose as demand grew, but one of the reasons for the increase in value was also the growing faith in the future of podcasts and audiobooks.

Podcast– taking the drug made Spotify pay more than $ 100 million to Joe Rogan.

And when the news Joe Roganin’s contract with Spotify was announced on May 19, 2020, the price increase really started.

When Spotify typically takes 30 percent of its advertising and subscription revenue from listening to musicn and distribute the remaining funds to music rights holders based on listening, one ad for popular podcasts could get millions.

Read more: Spotify had to choose between a podcaster giving space to a vaccine hook – and now it could be in trouble

Book publishers, on the other hand, have even reported record results. One reason is the increase in sales of audio books.

Instead of reading, many move on to listen to fact and fiction.

Read more: Sales of e-books grew sharply last year – two particularly interesting details can be found in the statistics of bookstores

The share price soared to nearly $ 390 at its best in early February 2021, with the stock paying just under $ 200 after closing the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Spotifyn in terms of growth story, the rise of its most popular podcast to an international topic may be far more important than the removal of a few outdated rock icons from its extensive music catalog.

Many investors hope that Spotify will grow into a giant of podcasts and voice communications in addition to music.

In doing so, Spotify is helped by the path signaled by Facebook, where as a platform company, it can better flirt with the emotional information market than traditional media.

Spotify has already committed itself to marking its corona pandemic programs with warning signs. Joe Rogan has announced that he will invest more in the background work and information checks of his background forces.

As Spotify grows, it will have to comply with similar data waste-smoking and self-regulatory legislation that is now being enacted around the world.

In December, the European Parliament adopted the Digital Services (DSA) and Digital Markets (DMA) regulations designed for this purpose. At the end of February, it is the turn of the data provision in the same package.

On the other hand, if millions of Spotify subscribers now stopped using the service, the company might be forced to monitor the content it shares more closely. Because in the end the customer decides.

But as long as there is no such force, it is well suited for Spotify that its position as a platform economy company and not as a journalistically responsible actor will be reduced to a mere confrontation and exchange of views on freedom of expression.