NEIL VS. THE VOLCANO
Who says drugged old hippies can’t be heroes?
The Situation
If you are unaware, Joe Rogan is a podcaster who has a very successful show. SO successful SPOTIFY gave the show/Joe a deal potentially worth in excess of a $100 million for the exclusive rights.
Rogan is a sharp-minded, weed-smoking right-leaning intellectual who likes to push things.
or
Joe is a drug-addicted opportunist who is charismatic with a vein of misogyny who likes conspiracy theories.
As with most things the truth lies between the two depending on your personal perspective.
The show has long been controversial as he does not avoid controversial guests and (from what I’ve seen) generally treats his guests with a great deal of respect. If his guest list wasn’t the who’s who of the ALT-RIGHT, every disenfranchised former medical Dr. with an insane anti-vax theory etc, there wouldn’t be much of a problem except Joe doesn’t really book people with the same regularity that fall away from his general life perspective.
He also has some awareness of what he’s doing as one of the agreed-upon deal points when SPOTIFY bought the show was his agreeing to have a good number of episodes pulled from the archive (thus making them unavail) while the deal was in place.
Some of the notable episodes included in the purge; Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Chris D’Elia, Tommy Chong, Joey Diaz and Mikhaila Peterson daughter of long time Rogan favorite Jordan Peterson.
THE FLASHPOINT
JRE’s current problems stem from a late 2021 interview with Virologist Robert Malone who worked on the mRNA technology in some capacity at some point in his career. (there is a dispute)
While researching if Pepcid would retard a protein necessary for COVID to reproduce, he co-authored a paper for Frontiers in Pharmacology that advocated a scientifically disproven claim regarding IVERMECTIN.
The publisher rejected the Ivermectin paper due to what it stated were “a series of strong, unsupported claims” which they determined did “not offer an objective nor balanced scientific contribution.” And Malone who was seemingly butt hurt by the experience went rogue. As he started throwing out all kinds of unsubstantiated claims all over social media.
Generally, when there is a disagreement in the scientific community it’s someone disputing a very specific situation. A+B=c, while someone else is positive A+B=X. Malone started just saying all sorts of crazy shit about vaccines. Almost all were disproven by the scientific community.
He was temporarily suspended by LinkedIn for spreading misinformation. Then December 29th 2021, for making unsubstantiated claims about the safety (now FDA approved) of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, was booted from Twitter permanently.
THE INCIDENT
The day after Twitter PERMANENTLY tossed the Dr. from their platform, (December 30th, 2021) Anti-Vaxer, conspiracist Joe Rogan had Malone on JRE to discuss whatever crazy shit his THC warped mind could come up with. Not shockingly it turned to COVID vaccines.
Rogan has had COVID and said Dr’s “threw everything at it”. And he was OK a week later.
I’m sure Joe has SAG insurance, which is the best insurance money can’t buy. The avg. person on the street can’t even purchase it. So he has (for a 50-year-old man) a $90k year health insurance coverage. Do you? I don’t.
I won’t go into his taking everything a Dr. offers once sick, but refusing what doctors beg you to take to prevent it. I’m sure you see my point.
Every great story has to have a protagonist to offset the antagonist. And although I’ve set up Joe as the ANTAGONIST, it’s difficult to call this next person the PROTAGONIST. But you can decide for yourself.
ENTER NEIL YOUNG
Neil Young is a “classic rocker”. A classic rocker from a protest era but there is something else I don’t see brought up when people talk about this. Young had Polio when he was a child. From what I understand he had to spend years learning to walk again. The Polio Vaccine wasn’t made avail until the late 1950’s. And the vaccine is largely credited with disease eradication.
Well, Neil Young (he’s no longer young) who happens to be in the danger zone as far as COVID goes, probably stumbled across all this accidentally and decided to actually do something.
And he did….
In a letter to both his record company and his management, he said the following.
“Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule,” the statement continues. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
I don’t think Neil thought he was going to win this battle in the moment. I hope not at least as SPOTIFY has too much invested in Joe to cut him loose. Although, given his contract is sure to have a morality clause that would give them a big fat out should SPOTIFY listen to either Young or their employees. Oh, did I mention this isn’t the first time people got pissed at Rogan for spreading or promoting certain positions?
From
DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS
Sept 22nd 2020
“Spotify employees were demanding direct editorial oversight over the recently-acquired Joe Rogan Experience podcast. That would include the ability to directly edit or remove sections of upcoming interviews, or block the uploading of episodes deemed problematic. The employees also demanded the ability to add trigger warnings, corrections, and references to fact-checked articles on topics discussed by Rogan in the course of his multi-hour discussions.”
So there have been problems prior to Neil doing what he did. It’s also unclear what Joe’s response is to having his accuracy checked. He has made corrections in the past and has shown a willingness to do so to a certain extent.
I’m also not sure anyone has a problem with his bringing people in who are controversial. I think there is a place for someone who will interview both Alex Jones and Bernie Sanders. But Rogan makes himself the story a little too often.
The man who is used to talking all the time has a tendency to pander to his guests. Guests who he approves and often handpicks.
Neil’s ultimatum wasn’t going to get Joe booted from SPOTIFY nor was the rest of the rock world going to get behind him. Some older members of his generation have, but I don’t think losing Neil Young and Joni Mitchell is going to close SPOTIFY down.
However, what SPOTIFY seems to have missed is who buys stock.
VARIETY
Jan 29th, 2022
Spotify’s market capitalization fell about $2.1 billion over a three-day span this week, coming after folk rocker Neil Young yanked his songs from the audio-streaming giant to protest Joe Rogan’s misinformation-spreading podcast.
Shares of Spotify fell 6% from Jan. 26–28. Over the same time period, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 1.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%. For the sake of comparison, Netflix’s stock recovered a bit, up 4.9% over the last three days, after getting hammered following its Jan. 20 earnings report.
To put that in nerd terms:
$2.1 Billion>$100mil
Now in Early morning trading, it was up +20% Monday, Jan 31st, but a look at the last month’s chart and SPOTIFY doesn't have happy shareholders. The Jan 31st bump still has the streaming company down -17% in 2022.
And although not an artist pulling his music, this controversy has become polarizing for Joe Rogan. When Howard Stern is calling you out for bad behavior I think it’s worth a look in the mirror, but when the Prince of England and his wife (who have an exclusive deal with SPOTIFY) decide to get involved, things begin to get serious if you are a European streaming service with at least three other options out there for people to move to.
AND to his credit, Joe made a statement outlining things he can improve upon (having on experts right after controversial figures to offer a more balanced perspective) and that people should “not look to me (Rogan) for medical advice”.
SPOTIFY is going to add warnings and links when necessary to JRE and other PODS so some “business decisions” have been made.
Time will tell how much impact the old man with the guitar had, but you gotta love someone standing up and doing something for the sole reason they think it’s the right thing to do.
