Spotify's Rogan problem: a special edition

A special edition of Podnews today, with two stories: Spotify and the BBC.

• Spotify has had a bad few days. Neil Young removed his music from Spotify last week after criticising 'dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in Spotify programming’. The chief of The World Health Organisation criticised Spotify and thanked Neil Young for, in his words, 'standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies around COVID-19 vaccination’.

• Other artists have followed Young’s lead. Joni Mitchell pledged to remove her music from the platform, while Nils Lofgren has also removed much of his work. David Crosby said he would like to remove his songs, but sold his publishing rights last year. Belly, an alt-rock band, criticised Spotify and placed a message on their Spotify page, after noting it’s very complicated to remove their music. Trade organisation Songwriters of North America supported the action; as did Howard Stern. More concerningly, British musician James Blunt threatened he will release new songs if Rogan doesn’t go. Anything but that!

• More significantly, podcaster Brené Brown announced she will not be releasing any new podcasts: she joined Spotify exclusively in Jan 2021. Another exclusive Spotify podcaster, Archewell, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s foundation, released a statement saying they started to express concerns to Spotify in April last year. In May, Harry expressed his concerns about vaccine misinformation on the Armchair Expert podcast. This may explain, in part, their apparent reluctance to release new material.

• Spotify published its content policy in full, after The Verge published a leaked excerpt. When read literally, the policies appear not to have been broken by Rogan’s guests. In addition, CEO Daniel Ek pledged to add content advisories to podcasts that contain COVID-19 discussions. He claims it’s “the first of its kind by a major podcast platform”, though YouTube has included automated COVID advisories for well over a year. It’s unclear how Spotify will add these advisories, and what to.

“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 … 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.” - Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

• Spotify cancellations seem high. The hashtag #deletespotify trended on Twitter, and cancellations included a disappointed analyst and early Spotify supporter. After apparent tech problems, Spotify stopped people from cancelling their subscriptions for a time.

• Other, more innocent, parties have been caught in the crossfire. PodcastAddict has received a number of one-star ratings furious that Rogan has been censored from PodcastAddict, while others protested that he should be removed from it. (The show still exists as an open, but empty, RSS feed).

• This comes at a bad time for Spotify, which has had long-standing criticism about the revenue it pays to musicians, and has recently made a number of announcements about non-existent podcasts, unavailable Spotify Hifi and missing subscription partners. It will present its latest financial results on Wednesday.

• In the US, the first amendment protects free speech from government suppression, but private companies like Spotify have no such obligation, entertainment lawyer Gordon Firemark told Podnews. We also note that the JRE show is made for Spotify (and paid-for by them): so Spotify does not fall under Section 230 which gives many online services immunity with respect to third-party content. Critics suggest views they call 'concerning misinformation' have been given undue prominence on an influential show and have not been subject to normal journalistic challenge.

• However, many musicians distrust Spotify, and may see this as a convenient excuse to give the company a kick. Particularly, Neil Young has a history of digital activism - he removed his music from Tidal in January 2021, after complaining about their branding of MQA audio as “masters”: his songs only returned in November. Young founded the hi-res PonoMusic, which ceased to trade two years after the launch of Tidal. Spotify announced a high-res format of their own in Feb 2021, but has yet to launch it; and a day after pulling his music from Spotify, Young added a blog post complaining about the service’s poor audio quality. Coincidentally, perhaps, he was quoted by Amazon Music in a press release apparently favouring their high-res format, and is now promoting the service on his website. It’s unclear if this is a promotional relationship.

  
  Sep 11 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Today’s only other news: the BBC moves against open podcasting

• The BBC announced that some of its radio-originated podcasts will now be exclusive on the BBC Sounds app for 28 days before they appear on other podcast apps. The shows affected in this “trial” include the BBC’s In Our Time, which was the corporation’s first podcast in Nov 2004, as well as topical shows The News Quiz and The Now Show.

• The BBC, funded by a mandatory $215 charge on UK households, says in its announcement that “this gives licence fee payers even more value”. It’s unclear how licence payers derive value from being unable to listen to programmes they’ve paid for in the podcast app of their choice. The BBC has been increasingly aggressive against an open ecosystem: it blocks its podcasts from Google Podcasts, and pulled its live streams in the UK from TuneIn.

• The decision from the BBC to restrict access to its programming comes as the UK government imposed a $382m funding gap by 2027, followed by an end to its current funding model.

Other stories, and the Tech Stuff, return tomorrow.

Tips and tricks - with Podpage

• Building a home studio? Filling it with rack-mounted audio equipment, but need a rack cabinet? You’ll want to get to IKEA.

Podcast News - with Quill

Produced by Quill: The Great Indoors How has technology changed around the world? Join Matt Roberts from Amdocs as he discusses how human technological adoption habits are evolving as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and how we’re rediscovering the magic of technology as a necessary result of being indoors.

ABC News Daily is new from Australia’s ABC today. A replacement for The Signal, which ended in December, the Supervising Producer is Stephen Smiley, and it’s hosted by Sam Hawley, who moves back to Australia from London, where she was ABC bureau chief.