Despite a good record in 2021, the CEO of Spotify is currently facing an unprecedented controversy, against a backdrop of misinformation.
Despite its support for Joe Rogan, Spotify seems to have understood thattoo lax a stance on fake news risked being detrimental to him. While presenting his report for the fourth quarter of 2021, the company’s CEO Daniel Ek spoke about the recent controversies, explaining: “the past few weeks have been a learning curve for us“. On the subject of disinformation in particular, the platform which had always refused to take a position this time changed its tune, ensuring that “despite his massive audience, Joe (Rogan, editor’s note) must also respect our policy”. The firm thus indicated that it had individually examined each episode of The Joe Rogan Experiencewithout finding a valid reason for a deletion.
Support for Neil Young is growing
It must be said that the controversy between Neil Young and the controversial Joe Rogan had more impact than expected for the music streaming platform. After the announcement of the boycott of the singer, who accused the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience to spread misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine, several other music industry figures have joined the movement.
—Stephen Stills Official (@Stephen__Stills) February 2, 2022
Host Brené Brown initially announced that she would no longer be broadcasting new episodes of her shows until further notice. A few days later, it’s the turn of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash publicly announced their support for Neil Young, asking them too, the removal of their music from the platformin the face of misinformation “with deadly consequences” by Joe Rogan. The trio notably called on singer Taylor Swift to join the movement. As a reminder, the young woman is today the only one to have succeeded in bending the social network, by withdrawing her music from the platform in 2014 to protest against the too low remuneration of artists. She finally backtracked in 2017 after several promises from the company.
