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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

Spotify has played this perfectly.

First they spent $100m on a very controversial figure, just to get an exclusive contract.

When he acted controversially they stood up for him, making plenty of people mad and getting others to disassociate themselves from Spotify (Young, Mitchell). Wouldn’t surprise me if they were having some quiet issues with sponsors/ads.

Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones? This of course goes over poorly with both the pro (why remove them?) and anti (why not the problem ones?) camps.

Hope it was all worth it Spotify. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company trying to destroy a formerly open ecosystem.

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I was absolutely stunned when Spotify did the Joe Rogan deal. You could already tell at that point that he was a divisive kind of person and I just couldn't understand why anyone would want that headache. I was already wondering how YouTube was going to deal with him and even joked to people I knew that the staff at YouTube were probably high fiving each other and planning a big party as soon as they heard the news.

And more than that, like Howard Stern before, some of his popularity comes from that edginess. So it's both the thing people came for, and the thing others are trying to get away from.

Spotify also has very little user stickiness. I switched pretty painlessly to Tidal and now I get better quality audio and the artists get more royalties and I don't have to have JRE and Peterson staring at me every time I login.

Totally agree how painless it is switching services - Tidal paying tunemymusic for music library imports was a good idea.

I wonder if that is part of why Spotify started pushing podcasts so hard - they can get exclusive content easier that way vs going with "commodity" music artists which will be available at all their competitors.

It 100% is. It’s very hard to get an exclusive with any recording artists, let alone enough big ones to meaningfully move the needle. With other good services around Spotify is basically a commodity player in the streaming market.

But exclusive audio content (Podcasts, audio books, etc) is something they can do to keep people from switching. Whether it’s only on Spotify or maybe just comes out a week early and ad free, it’s additional value the other services can’t provide.

Plus Spotify has made all the streaming money they will. They’re not going to grow another 100m users on music alone. But wall street wants more and podcasts driving subscriptions and podcast advertising is a real growth opportunity to make Wallstreet happy.

Of course none of this is good for Frank and Sally podcast listener. But when did that ever matter? The big companies have decided how things will work.

This is my thinking. Unless Spotify builds up a library of exclusive content, they will be destroyed as soon as apple and google stop doing such a shit job at music.

The really weird thing is that the media keeps saying Rogan's "controversial", but almost no one cares. It doesn't show up in polling -- your average person has about 15 things of a higher priority right now.

Almost feels like the point of many articles is to tell people the correct thoughts on a topic, instead of actually finding out and reporting how people feel.

I hope that no-one here was surprised about this given that this multi-million 'exclusive contract' was seen by many as a sell-out to a private platform that has the upper hand on what they allow on their platform.

It seems that those concerned about him selling out now have a point, but I doubt anyone cares - JR still made his money and that decision was ultimately up to him.

But perhaps the big lesson here for others is to run your own company and host your own show.

> But perhaps the big lesson here is to run your own company and host your own show.

And give up $100M? LOL why on earth would that be the big lesson?

If anything the lesson here is to blow up harder and faster after you've taken the $100M so you can go back to doing your own thing with your massive and loyal fanbase.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, tear it off.

How Spotify ever thought this was a good idea still eludes me

Guess it depends on what you value more: your editorial control or the cash.

We know what he chose. I’d argue it’s what the vast majority would choose.

But they both (Spotify and Rogan) knew what they were choosing.

Every platform is eventually going to have to deal with this.

The correct move is to be a free speech maximalist (in either political direction) until laws are broken. You can also make rules against directed harassment and threats.

Tell the detractors that "it could just as easily be your side being silenced", because that's the honest truth.

People will complain, but only the fringes will leave.

That ends in a cesspool that nobody is willing to spend money on or do business with.

See Voat.

It worked fine in the past when the mainstream platforms were also free speech platforms. Scale matters and those websites are only terrible because they're bastions for everybody else who also got banned.

voat is a forum, podcast platforms are passive and do not have any kind of direct social interaction. 'free speech until the law is broken' is what appx the entire internet was like until ~6 years ago.

No, Voat was a cesspool, because Reddit really only pissed of the "unreasonable" people, who all went to Voat, and unsurprisingly made it a cesspool.

> That ends in a cesspool that nobody is willing to spend money on or do business with.

That's not quite right. Voat was populated by the fringe that was evicted from other more mainstream platforms, Reddit in particular. So the primary demographic of their userbase is "people whose content isn't allowed on Reddit". Which given that Reddit is fairly permissive compared with many places results in an incredibly skewed userbase. Without a compelling reason for users that are more mainstream to switch I think this result is unsurprising.

The "free speech" side of fedi suffers from this dynamic as well. There's a growing contingent that's there simply because they were removed from Twitter.

This is all a great example of why deplatforming doesn't work at all. In seeking to silence various groups they instead get concentrated in specific locations which results in a greater degree of polarization.

Free speech has nothing to do with it. Spotify paid him a $100M to provide a product according to their terms. The idea that this is a free speech issue is ridiculous and makes no sense. If it was a matter of access to the content, what you should be arguing for is not having an exclusive contract with Spotify, but use one of the million other services that allows anyone to download the episode.

Free speech doesn't always mean an issue with the government. Free speech can be seen as the opposite of censorship.

This is plainly censorship (within Spotify's rights, but still censorship) and while nobody's 1A rights have been violated, it's still affecting someone's ability to publish to their audience.

That's not a legal issue, but a moral one.

Spotify already paid him $100M to make his podcast inaccessible to people. Where was the concern then? If Spotify limiting Joe Rogan from post the podcast to other services was not a concern then, why is Spotify limiting what it hosts now a concern? I see no possible philosophical distinction, but if you have potential justifications, please feel free to share.

I think that the fact that's he's been contracted for exclusivity really changes the nature of the free speech argument. Rogan is functionally being hired to Spotify to produce content. I don't expect the ability to freely express myself when representing my employer.

I think it's a very different situation, simply sharing your content on a platform, where I think free speech is much more relevant, vs. being contracted to produce content for a platform, where I think it stands to reason that you're expected to produce what the platform want.

Morals don't make money. Spotify has one responsibility and that's to it's shareholders. Companies that put morals over profits lose to those that don't.

Free speech is not limited to First Amendment protection of censorship by the state. It can also be inhibited by chilling effects, self-censorship, market power, taboos, etc.

But I think the motivation for "free speech maximalism", from the perspective of a tech platform, is more strategy than principle: if you're in a position to make a decision as to who or what to silence, you are going to be subject to constant pressure from all directions, rightly or wrongly. Sticking to your guns and enforcing a limited and specific scope (illegality, ToS violations) is a "bright line" policy. Holding to it consistently means not having to constantly justify and take heat for tough gray-area decisions, which is a losing game anyway, since you won't be able to appease everyone no matter what you do.

Ideologically I am a free speech maximalist, but I also personally despise being advertised to nonconsensually.

The issue with unadorned free speech maximalism (aside from people legitimately complaining about idiots spewing lies) is that it also dictates a 100% hands-off approach to even the most egregious spamming, as spam is legal.

Spam is not legal I thought

As a fellow free speech maximalist, I think it's possible (and fair) to have a distinction between individual opinion and commercial promotion, especially on a commercial platform.

Free speech principles don't preclude some reasonable standards for curation of content. The key is to be consistent, regardless of perspective, and completely transparent. Where private, commercial platforms like FB, Reddit and Twitter have erred is in uneven enforcement of arbitrarily shifting rules which are hardly clear even when disclosed.

They were pretty much doomed to eventual failure once they started responding to subjective and rapidly changing woke sensibilities. Weirdly, I've read thoughtful posts by both Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg which clearly show they understand they are being backed into a untenable 'no-win' corner yet still find it impossible to avoid.

The fringes will leave. And the advertisers. Because P&G and Fire and Chase Bank do _not_ want to be associated with this kind of stuff.

It’s much easier. You don’t need to be a free speech maximalist _on your platform_. Trying to tie up the whole podcast market under your umbrella is what caused this.

If Rogan was still doing things himself with a standard podcast RSS feed her could still be heard without issue. Spotify listeners could listen without issue. Spotify wouldn’t be getting dragged in the media.

This is 100% Spotify’s fault for trying to control someone controversial and was 100% foreseeable.

> Every platform is eventually going to have to deal with this

I agree. It’s part and parcel of being a platform. You know what’s better than platforms _allowing_ people to say what they want?

What we had before Spotify (etc.) tried to take over: the open world of podcasting.

Radio stations used to deal with this all the time - remember Howard Stern? Rush Limbaugh? Way more divisive than Rogan.

I am not sure there is really a winning play in situations like this that does not result in substantial losses either way.

I agree. They put themselves between a rock and a hard place. The solution was not to hire him, but that’s long past.

You realise they have some pretty vile artists on their platform too right? I mean if we're objecting to content here they've literally platformed homophobic and xenophobic music for years. Are we honestly arguing that having conversations critical of big pharma and public health policy is now worse than homophobic hate? The only reason this is being discussed by the media is because this time it's impacting the wrong people.

I disagree. It’s one thing to provide access to a ton of music. Yes there will be some objectionable stuff in there. They can decide to hide it or not. That’s passive.

It’s another thing to actively pay to _create_ such content. That’s the big issue here.

It is sarcasm.

I know it is sarcasm. I just do not see a clear winning alternative that doesn't lead to someone posting a similar sarcastic response.

Neither do I. Spotify set themselves up for this and there is no good way out.

I think the only way this wouldn’t have happened is if Rogan had made himself less controversial over time before a flare up like this occurred.

But I don’t think Spotify wanted a vanilla personality, if so why pay $100m for Rogan?

The winning play is to make no changes that could get you back in the news, and wait for the news cycle to move on to the next outrage.

Possibly try to grease Rogan's hand to lay low on the vaccine topic/guests for a while.

> Now they seem to be removing episodes, but reportedly not the controversial ones?

Yeah I don't get this part. While I could understand why they'd want to remove Alex Jones, there are uncontroversial names like Tim Ferriss who were also removed.

Baseless speculation, but maybe the guests are asking for their episodes to be removed so they aren't associated with the podcast?

I really doubt that. Many of the episodes that were removed were fellow comedians like Theo Von and Tom Segura who are in Joe Rogan's peer group.

Numerous affected guests have made videos and spoken about it. Only Rogan and Spotify know why.

We get to find out if Rogan actually has principles or if he just talks a good game. I'm hoping he's not a sellout and this situation results in his move to some decentralized platform. 80% of his audience will follow, and the ones he lost to YouTube will come back.

It'd be awesome if he dragged all his podcaster buddies along with him, and the comics and musicians followed.

Uninstalled Spotify, guess no more jre podcast until Joe moves. If he doesn't, I'm not interested in whatever kind of person sells out like that after taking such a powerful stand on censorship.

> I'm hoping he's not a sellout and this situation results in his move to some decentralized platform.

What platform? Why do you need a platform? Podcasts were already 100% open. No platform necessary.

What exactly does deleting episodes get Spotify? I'm really not seeing the grand strategy you are alluding to.

Edit: I missed the obvious sarcasm. I need coffee.

They're alluding to a lack of grand strategy.

Edit: Enjoy your coffee!

I'm pretty sure the comment is sarcasm.

Understandable given how dry - but you may want to tweak the settings on your sarcasm detector.

Pretty sure the first sentence is sarcasm.

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