If you search for music by US band Belly on Spotify you get a discordant note. The header on the band’s listing reads: DELETE SPOTIFY. Band members explain: “Heinous enough that @Spotify doesn’t pay its artists but to use revenue to fund Covid disinfo, thereby prolonging the pandemic, is harmful.”
Search for Crazy Horse and E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren and he encourages “music lovers everywhere, to stand with us all, and cut ties with Spotify. Music is our planet’s sacred weapon, uniting and healing billions of souls every day. Pick up your sword and start swinging. It’s a powerful action you can all take now to honour truth”.
Spotify, the audio streaming giant whose mission statement is “always listening”, is being accused of having a tin ear. The Swedish firm is being blamed for spreading dangerous Covid anti-vaccination propaganda, largely via the wildly popular podcast by Joe Rogan that it hosts. It has put the firm at the heart of the culture wars and left many wondering what its future is.
Like other tech giants, notably Facebook which has found itself in the cross hairs of bitter political and cultural battles over the content on its site, Spotify has always insisted it is merely a platform, not a publisher. That, it argues, exempts it from the normal rules governing media outfits which have to make sure content is fair, accurate and is not defamatory. The Rogan row suggests it might not be able to hold that line much longer and may face beefed up regulation that will hit profits.
Analysts point out that the controversial content on Spotify has not been created by an activist, blogger, politician or celebrity, as it is on Facebook, but, rather, from its own star podcaster, Rogan, who hosts The Joe Rogan Experience. Spotify hired Rogan in a deal rumoured to be worth $100 million (£74 million). Spotify knew Rogan was a spiky performer when it hired him and did so to boost its ad revenue — a task he has accomplished. That makes Spotify more akin to a publisher than a tech platform, leading tech commentator Peter Kafka of Recode points out.
The controversy comes at an awkward time. Spotify has more paying subscribers than any other audio streaming service operating globally, but its market share is declining, according to research firm Midia. It reports that, at 31 per cent, Spotify had the highest subscription market share in the global streaming business as of Q2 2021. But this figure was down from 33 per cent in the previous year quarter (Q2 2020), and down from 34 per cent in the quarter a year prior to that (Q2 2019).
The “standout success story” among streaming services based in the West lately has been YouTube Music. Midia reports that the Alphabet-owned streamer saw subscription growth of over 50 per cent in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021. YouTube announced in September that it had surpassed 50 million global subscribers to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
Spotify’s crisis started when a group of more than 200 US professors and public health officials called on the streamer to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation on its platform. They pointed to an episode of Rogan’s Spotify podcast that featured Dr Robert Malone, an infectious disease expert, that included “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines”, according to the letter. Dr Malone claimed that Americans were suffering from a “mass formation psychosis” and had been “hypnotised” into getting vaccinated and wearing masks.
Last week, musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell took over from the medics and removed their music from Spotify in protest at that episode and others Rogan hosted which they claimed backed the anti-vax movement. Young called Spotify “the home of life-threatening Covid misinformation”. Mitchell wrote: “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives.”
The creators of the award-winning Science VS podcast have been critical of Spotify, and a star US podcaster, Brené Brown, who signed an exclusive deal with Spotify in 2020, said she would not release any more episodes “until further notice”. Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who have signed a multi-year deal to produce and host podcasts for Spotify under their production company Archewell Audio, claimed they had been raising the issue of “misinformation” with Spotify for almost a year. “Hundreds of millions of people are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day,” they said.
Young and Mitchell’s fans took to social media to support the artists’ calls to sign up for Amazon Music instead. Twitter users reported Spotify had temporarily shut down its live customer support, as subscribers tried to cancel their accounts. Spotify has made no comment on the number of cancellations.
Whatever the extent of the exodus, the row has hit Spotify where it hurts — in its bottom line. Its shares plunged 12 per cent last week, wiping out $4 billion in market value, though this has since recovered. But could there be further damage down the line?
It looks unlikely in the short term. There are few signs of other artists abandoning ship. Analysts point out that it is partly because musicians typically do not actually own the rights to their music — their record companies do and they are reluctant to sacrifice revenue. Artists can make up to 75 per cent of their streaming revenue from Spotify. That would change if big stars, such as Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, persuaded their record companies that it was time to quit the service. Swift did briefly take her music off Spotify in 2014 to protest against its ad-funded “free” tier.
What of Rogan? He seems secure. The Joe Rogan Experience remains number one on its charts in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But he has apologised. “I’m very sorry this is happening to Spotify and they’re taking so much heat for it,” he said in a 10-minute post on Instagram.
He said he would try to “balance things out” with “experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones”. “If I pissed you off, I’m sorry,” he added.
For its part, Spotify published its existing rules governing content and said it would add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about Covid-19. Critics say this is only likely to increase the number of listeners just as parental advisory stickers on CDs helped to boost their sales. Spotify also created a Covid-19 information “hub for data-driven facts and up-to-date information” from the health and scientific communities.
Daniel Ek, the firm’s chief executive, said: “We haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly. It’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time.”
Ek and Rogan’s mea culpas — and the speed with which they were delivered — do hint at trouble ahead in the long run. Spotify has expanded dramatically from music into podcasts in recent years — and garnered hefty profits. It paid $340 million for the podcast network Gimlet Media in 2019 and nearly $200 million for The Ringer in 2020. As a result of that and splashy hires, such as Rogan, it has now established itself as the leading destination for podcasts with, the company says, 3.2 million podcasts available.
It’s a lucrative business. When people listen to music on Spotify, the streamer has to pay the record label, which in turn pays the artist. But when people listen to Spotify-owned podcasts, the firm can recoup all the revenue, minus what they’ve paid the podcaster. Spotify can also sell ads that run in its own podcasts — something it does not do for premium subscribers to its music service.
Any fresh regulation and imposition of media rules that govern how traditional media behave will make it harder for Spotify to attract stars like Rogan, and make it harder for the firm to prosper. And Ek knows what can happen when a big franchise loses its way. A keen Arsenal fan, he campaigned against plans to create a super league of the top English and European clubs last year. He won that battle. Guiding Spotify may be a tougher pitch.
