Singer Neil Young, 76, the voice of the classic Rockin’ in the Free World, had an average of 6 million monthly listeners on Spotify. He pulled his catalog and Netflix from music lost 6% on its stock and $2.9 billion in market value. If Justin Bieber, one of the platform’s audience leaders, with 78 million listeners in January 2022, turned off his record player there, could the loss be US$ 37.7 billion, the exact market value of Spotify today? It may be a simple and absurd account, but if Bieber attacks, it will hurt. The world’s most popular music, podcast and video streaming service, born in 2008 in Sweden, has had a taste of how much a celebrated controversy weighs in its numbers – although in the medium term analysts say the trend is to recover from the blow in good spirits. . The first straight to the chin came thanks to his most popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which featured controversial interviewees debating Covid-19, which angered Young.
Spotify’s drop does not impact 2021, which ended the year in continuous growth, resulting in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021 of 2.7 billion euros, up 24% compared to 2020, and 407 million active subscribers, of which 180 million premium subscribers. Among his podcasts, the most notorious and expensive is Joe Rogan’s, averaging 11 million listeners per episode — Young’s monthly listeners, unfortunately, don’t tickle the presenter’s number much.
In the music sector, Spotify has 70 million songs in its catalog and, they say, it only generates big money for the big names — the smaller ones take a negligible copyright, one of the controversies that the platform has escaped unscathed, since great artists are not protesting it.
But why did it all happen? Young struggles with Rogan, who has a long, multifaceted and successful track record in American showbusiness. He has been a respected standup comedian since 1990, has commented on UFC fights since 1997, has starred in sitcoms such as NewsRadio (1995) and found streaming radio to be his microphone of choice. He is no ordinary presenter. He does two- to three-hour unscripted interviews with a variety of personalities, including scientists and innovators such as Elon Musk, who supported him this week, quipping Neil Young: “If you can’t censor the guy I don’t like, I’ll let you listen to Rockin’ in the Free World”.
the controversy Spotify would have paid $100 million for Rogan to migrate to its platform in 2020. The amount has never been confirmed or denied, nor has it said how many years this would be diluted, even so it is one of the largest operations in the medium. The interview that sparked the ire of the scientific community and Young was that of Robert Malone, a pioneering biochemist, physicist, pharmacist, researcher, vaccinologist and precursor of mRNA technology, which is the basis of Covid-19 vaccines. With that résumé, he has sharp opinions about possible side effects. He took two doses himself, it’s not an anti-vaccine, but he had serious myocarditis after the second. In addition, he believes in natural immunity as superior to the vaccine and created the expression Mass Formation Psychosis to explain the government’s campaign against Covid-19.
And Rogan? In her long interviews, she has already stated that if the person was healthy and young and asked him if he should get the vaccine, he would say “no”. Then she came back saying that he is not the best source of information for anyone, not even himself. He said the podcast was accused of spreading misinformation because of interviews with Malone and Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who is the most published doctor in history in his field. Both are highly credentialed, intelligent, successful, and have different opinions than the narrative used in the mainstream. “I want to hear their opinion. Spotify suggested that we put up a disclaimer saying that the respondent’s opinion is contrary to the consensus of experts. And that I would then do interviews with other perspectives. I agreed. I will try to balance that out,” he stated.
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