The CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek has defended their decision to back their deal with Joe Rogan amidst ongoing boycotting from artists and users.
After Neil Young kicked off the trend to remove music from Spotify in protest of the streaming platform supporting a podcast full of COVID misinformation, many artists have followed suit.
Spotify CEO has commented on the company’s failure to take action against the issue during a Spotify earnings call.
“We don’t change our policies based on one creator nor do we change it based on any media cycle or call from anyone else,”
Wait what? Ek doesn’t think the company should change anything based on any amount of feedback. That sounds like a terrible business model.
“I do believe they’re right for our platform. And while Joe has a massive audience — he is actually the number one podcast in more than 90 markets — he also has to abide by those policies.” he added.
The streaming service has suffered a significant loss in market value so it’s no wonder Ek had to let his investors know what was going on. It certainly doesn’t sound like it would put anyone’s mind to ease except of course, maybe Joe Rogan’s.
Rogan commented on the whole situation recently saying: “I’m not trying to promote misinformation. I’m not trying to be controversial,” he said. “I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations.”
Throughout the earnings call, Ek said the ordeal has provided “number of learning opportunity for the company,” adding that “there’s still work to be done.”
The company have chosen to publish their policies for the first time to try to put a stop to user and creator concerns and the CEO did note that he should have done that earlier.
“That’s on me,” he said. “But we have them out there now, so that everyone can look at these policies and understand what goes on our platform. Our goal obviously is to have as much content as we can. We’re going to try and do everything we can to build the best possible experience for creators where they can interact and engage with their fans and monetize those relationships.”
