Spotify has ignored calls to kick Joe Rogan off its platform, but dozens of the controversial podcaster’s episodes have vanished from the platform.
At least 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” have been pulled from Spotify over the weekend, including interviews with Amy Schumer, Marc Maron, Bill Burr, Andy Dick, Tool frontman Maynard J. Keenan and Iliza Shlesinger, according to Rolling Stone.
No explanation was given for the removal of the episodes, and a spokesperson for Spotify did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily News Sunday.
But the move comes amid yet another apology from Rogan, this time for his repeated use of the N-word after singer India Arie published a highlight reel with more than two dozen uses of the racial slur by the podcaster.
“I know that to most people, there is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now,” Rogan said in a video Saturday. “I haven’t said it in years. Instead of saying ‘the N-word,’ I would just say the word. I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
But the clips were “out of context,” Rogan said, and merely “snippets” of conversations.
“It’s a very unusual word, but it’s not my word to use,” he said. “I never used it to be racist, because I’m not racist, but whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say ‘I’m not racist,’ you’ve f--ked up, and I clearly have f--cked up.”
He also said he used it only when talking about other people who used it, like comedian Redd Foxx in the ‘70s and the title of Richard Pryor’s 1982 album.
This marks the second public apology Rogan has made in less than a week, although his first was also more of a defense than an apology.
After Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren and researcher Dr. Brené Brown pulled their libraries from Spotify and Prince Harry and Meghan expressed “concerns,” Rogan pushed back against the allegations that he was intentionally spreading mis- and disinformation about COVID-19.
“These podcasts are very strange because they’re just conversations. And oftentimes I have no idea what I’m going to talk about until I sit down and talk to people. And that’s why some of my ideas are not that prepared or fleshed out because I’m literally having them in real time, but I do my best and they’re just conversations, and I think that’s also the appeal of the show,” he said in a 10-minute Instagram video.
“It’s one of the things that makes it interesting. So I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much from it.”
At the same time, Spotify introduced a series of measures to monitor “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health,” but never mentioned Rogan.
“A decade ago, we created Spotify to enable the work of creators around the world to be heard and enjoyed by listeners around the world. To our very core, we believe that listening is everything. Pick almost any issue and you will find people and opinions on either side of it,” Spotify Chief Executive Daniel Ek said in a statement.
“Personally, there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly. We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”
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