The fallout from the ongoing Spotify standoff has now been addressed by Joe Rogan personally. The podcaster took to his social media to share a video in which he spoke about his dismay that Neil Young has left Spotify and confided that he does have intentions of doing better in addressing the concerns that musicians like Young and compatriot Joni Mitchell have expressed.
Last week, Neil Young issued an ultimatum to the streaming giant stating that either Spotify begin censoring Rogan's podcast over what Young believes to be misinformation regarding Covid-19 and the vaccine, or his music would need to be pulled from the platform.
Young articulated in his demands, “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy." Young punctuated his intentions definitively, “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
In the week since, not only have artists like Joni Mitchell showed their solidarity with Young and issued the same ultimatum, but Spotify has taken a hit on Wall Street as well. In the last week alone the company has seen a $2 billion dollar loss of it's market value - in a 2022 that already saw the company's stock slide significantly.
Over the weekend, Joe Rogan addressed the ongoing friction in a message that was less confrontational and much more appreciative of Spotify's support and apologetic that the situation has unfolded the way it has.
In his video, Rogan shared, "I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them whenever I get something wrong. I try to correct it because I'm interested in telling the truth."
Better framing the context of is show, Rogan added, "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."
Rogan conceded that he does understand the growing concerns of misinformation and intends to work towards addressing those concerns. "If there's anything that I've done that I could do better, it's having more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones. I would most certainly be open to doing that. And I would like to talk to some people who have differing opinions on the podcasts in the future."
On the very same day that Rogan shared his statement, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek revealed that the streaming giant would now add a disclaimer to programming that discusses COVID.
