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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Speaking of vaccine disinformation, if you're looking for songs by Neil Young or Joni Mitchell or podcast episodes from the popular podcast of Brené Brown, you'll have to look somewhere other than Spotify. You may have heard by now that Neil Young pulled his catalog from the platform last week after issuing an ultimatum to get Spotify to de-platform Joe Rogan, the immensely popular podcast host who has been accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines and promoting treatments like Ivermectin.

In a letter, Young posted but quickly deleted from his website, he wrote, "Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform. I want to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young, not both." Spotify began to take down Neil Young's music last Wednesday, then over the weekend, Joni Mitchell and Brené Brown followed suit. Joining me now to talk about the latest controversy surrounding Spotify and Rogan is Ashley Carman, senior reporter at The Verge and the writer of the Hot Pod newsletter. Ashley, thanks so much for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Ashley Carman: Hello, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, wondering if any of you out there have left Spotify yourselves in the wake of the Joe Rogan controversy. If so, how'd you make that decision or anything else you'd like to say or ask? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Ashley, for people who've never heard about Joe Rogan or his podcast called The Joe Rogan Experience. Who is he? What's his show about? What does this controversy mostly center on?

Ashley Carman: Joe Rogan, most popularly, I would assume people would know him from the show Fear Factor. He used to host it. He's a comedian. He also hosts MMA fights, and he started this podcast years ago on YouTube it was mainly distributed but available everywhere. Mostly, he has a wide range of interests. He'll have comedians on, he's very into fitness and wellness, so he'll talk about that.

I think that interest there is what led us up to this current drama, which is about him having some scientists on more on the fringe side of things. Specifically, a doctor named Dr. Robert Malone, who did work on the mRNA vaccines, but he came on the show and really said some controversial stuff that many people would consider misinformation. Rogan didn't push back much, and that began to snowball into what we have today, which is Neil Young speaking out and many others.

Brian Lehrer: That was back in April of 2021, wasn't it, this prime misinformation event?

Ashley Carman: He had Dr. Robert Malone on actually in December, late December this past year. It just happened, which is why--

Brian Lehrer: There's been multiple incidents because I have another clip that I'm not going to play because I don't want to-- [crosstalk]

Ashley Carman: Yes, he's definitely said-- I believe in the spring, he also was in the news because he said, "If you're 21 years old and you ask me if you should get vaccinated, I'm going to say no." That was another separate incident.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Exactly, and so at the end of December, hundreds of medical experts came together to sign an open letter. Do you want to run us very briefly through some of their biggest concerns and why now?

Ashley Carman: Yes, again, prompted by that specific episode with Dr. Malone, these scientists, doctors, nurses, basically broad people from the medical community published an open letter essentially saying, hey, Rogan and Spotify, which we should reiterate here. Spotify reportedly pays Joe Rogan $100 million to publish a show exclusively on Spotify. We can get into why this issue is happening now and why Spotify is at the center of it, but that's a core reason.

These medical community members published a letter essentially saying Joe Rogan has millions of listeners, even if a small percentage take what he says and what his guests say as I shouldn't get vaccinated, this could constitute a real public health issue, and so they really urge Rogan and Spotify to take down this misinformation, they say, and reconsider how they're positioning the pandemic in the show.

Brian Lehrer: Joni Mitchell's departure from Spotify came shortly after Neil Young's. Joni Mitchell said she stands "in solidarity with Neil young and the global scientific and medical communities", and then podcast of Brené Brown. Listener just tweeted, we can add Mary Trump to that list. I can't verify a listener's tweet, maybe you know, but when you take this number, and maybe it's still a very small number, of major podcasters or major musical artists pulling their materials from Spotify in protest of them continuing to allow the disinformation, just labeling it, I guess, how big of a loss is this to Spotify? How big is it of a threat?

Ashley Carman: Right now, not much, frankly. I think to really get the situation, the core thing you need to understand is that Spotify pays Rogan to exclusively distribute his podcast. The reason that they're paying him this much money is because Spotify traditionally makes money through subscriptions and ad revenue. Podcasts, even if you have a subscription on Spotify and you listen to a Joe Rogan podcast, you're still going to hear an ad. Every time you listen to a Joe Rogan episode, Spotify makes money, and that's really, really critical here. Versus when you listen to a Neil Young song or a Joni Mitchell song, especially if you're a paying subscriber, you don't hear ads. Spotify pays royalties to the music labels and the artists and the writers. It's not going to prioritize those music relationships over Rogan.

Brian Lehrer: Can I linger on that point for a second because it goes to this basic question that we hear over and over again with Facebook and others which is, are these things just platforms so we shouldn't hold them accountable for the content on those platforms because just like anybody can walk into a park and spout any lies or whatever that they want, they can go onto a neutral platform and do that, and they shouldn't control that speech versus, are these media organizations, producers who are responsible for their content, and in the case of Spotify and Joe Rogan specifically, they are a producer and investor in that content?

Ashley Carman: Exactly. When we talk about Facebook and YouTube specifically, or Twitter, what we're talking about is user-generated content. Users coming on the platform, saying some stuff, maybe it's fake, and this debate over how much the platform should really intercept that information or put a warning on it or whatever else.

The difference in this situation is that Spotify, yes, is paying Rogan to make this content just like you are paid to make a radio show for WNYC, or I'm paid to write for a website. We have editorial standards at these companies. The question becomes, what are Spotify's editorial standards? What are their rules? What are the people that they're paying able to say? That's the crux of what we're talking about here, because up until Friday, when I broke this news and then Sunday, Spotify officially published it, we had no idea what their rules were and what policies they adhere to. That's really what's going on here.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote, "This marks a critical turning point in Spotify's company narrative. It's no longer a music company, but one committed to podcasting to the point that it will compromise relationships with musical artists to ensure its strategies' success." Here's a cynical question coming from a listener on Twitter but maybe appropriately cynical or skeptical. Listener asked, is this Spotify controversy a power move by hedge funds and Amazon Music who have been buying up music catalogs of musicians and want more control? In other words, Spotify has competitors out there, YouTube Music, Apple, Amazon Music, and do they have anything to do with this?

Ashley Carman: I will not pretend to have any idea whether Neil Young went to the platforms ahead of time and was like, "Hey, what can you offer me if I'm going to do this?" What I will say is, yes, of course, these are Spotify's competitors, and we saw after these musicians pulled their music, that Amazon offered maybe a four-month or something trial for Amazon Music. Sirius was advertising its Neil young channel or something. Apple Music is like, we love Neil Young.

Of course, their competitors are going to capitalize on this moment, but I will also point out that Apple but also Amazon Music primarily has been spending a ton of money as well in the podcasting space. Theoretically, Joe Rogan, arguably the biggest podcaster in the world, there could come a time where Amazon Music actually would like to have him on their platform. They're really playing both music and podcast and it's competitive on all fronts.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. A number of listeners writing in to say they deleted Spotify just in the last few days over this. One writes, I deleted Spotify immediately on my laptop, desktop, and phone. I will use Pandora in the future. I did not pay for it though. Someone else tweets, by the way, Joni Mitchell told Rolling Stone in 1991 that both she and Neil Young had childhood polio in Canada, they are both Canadian, before the polio vaccine had been introduced, so pertinent to vaccine disinformation.

I see from your reporting that The Verge recently received screenshots of internal Spotify communications. Dustee Jenkins, Spotify's Head of Global Communications and Public Relations, posted a message on the company's Slack saying, the controversial episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience "didn't meet the threshold for removal". What is their threshold for removal and what have they done with the Joe Rogan disinformation to address this controversy?

Ashley Carman: That's a great question. Well, in that same story, I published their guidelines, and then on Sunday, Spotify published their rules. I can read you, there's only four rules related to health information. Basically, you cannot have content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that can cause offline harm or pose a direct threat to public health.

This includes but might not be limited to asserting that COVID-19, AIDS, cancer, or other serious life-threatening diseases are a hoax or not real, encouraging the consumption of bleach products to cure illnesses and diseases, promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death, and encouraging people to purposely get infected with COVID-19 in order to build immunity to it like promoting a Coronavirus party.

Those are all the rules, and when you read them, it's pretty obvious why Joe Rogan didn't break them. I don't think Joe Rogan thinks that COVID is fake or a hoax. His guest has said that-- and his guest didn't even say that vaccines are designed to cause death, which is the specific language in this rule. His guest just said that vaccines are experimental, which of course, these vaccines underwent clinical trials, they've been tested, so they're not in the experimental phase anymore. You can see how very easily you can start to skirt around these rules. You can say vaccines cause death, you cannot say vaccines are designed to cause death.

Brian Lehrer: I could continue to read tweets. Sorry if I was distracted for a second. I'm looking at all the tweets coming in and they're going by so fast. I don't know if I could stop them to read them. So many tweets coming in from individual listeners who say they've left Spotify. Another one, I just left Spotify for Tidal, that's another one, T-I-D-A-L, because of Neil Young, and honestly, more importantly, the poultry amount Spotify pays artists and creators.

Let me jump off that tweet to ask you about that because that's the conversation about Spotify that we used to have. There's no way for musicians to make a living anymore selling their music. They need to tour and tour and tour and tour. That might be a slight overstatement, but where does that stand today?

Ashley Carman: I think that just speaks to these dynamics where you can see artists like Neil Young. He did say that Spotify represents a huge portion. I believe 60% of his streaming income comes from Spotify.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Ashley Carman: He's still taking the hit for sure, and as is his record label and whatnot, but regardless, I think that's why this $100 million to Rogan really is so stark to musicians, it seems, because here they are getting paid pennies if that for streams, not in the aggregate but per stream, not even pennies, and you see them paying Rogan so many millions of dollars. I think that just adds to this broader tension of, "Okay, what does Spotify value? Are they a music company or a podcasting company? Who are they paying? Where are they really getting their value from?" I think it just adds to the broader discussion and it contributes to why we've seen this bubble up now.

Brian Lehrer: Alice in New Paltz, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alice.

Alice: How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Hi there. We got you now. Go ahead.

Alice: Okay, cool. My housemate actually and my friend made this point, but we were reading the letter from Neil Young when he announced this and we realized he said that we could stream his music on Amazon. We thought that was funny because he was making a huge moral stance, and then he has his music advertised streaming on those platforms that obviously has its own moral problem. We just thought that it devalued his point a little bit and it was a little hypocritical.

Brian Lehrer: Alice, it's such a great point. In fact, listeners, our next guest is going to be Congressman Ro Khanna from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but he also represents Silicon Valley and has a new book about how tech can serve us all. Can tech serve us all? We'll talk to Ro Khanna coming up next.

Ashley, Alice makes a great point. If the main alternative to Spotify is Amazon and we've done 50 million shows talking about alternatives to Amazon because you don't want to support that economy, is it only one tech giant, one sketchy tech, morally sketchy tech giant or another when we're having this discussion?

Ashley Carman: Kind of. Of course, you can go out and buy a Neil Young album and just listen into it like that and he will make more money in that way, but unfortunately, yes, this is our reality at this point is it's the big platforms against one another. I think you talk about that issue I'm sure quite a lot as it relates to antitrust and whatnot. I will not pretend that this is not an odd conundrum to be in.

Brian Lehrer: Jasper in Stanford, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jasper.

Jasper: Hi, Brian, big fan of the show. I wanted to make the point that, well, I've been listening to Joe Rogan for a few years now, and since his Spotify deal, he's gone off the rails really. He used to have this air to him of seeing all sides. He'll have Ben Shapiro on one week and Bernie Sanders on the other week, and then play both sides of the coin. Then now, he's really dug his feet into the ground. He's really not moving.

This is an anecdotal story, but I was recently staying with a woman who was in her 80s and she refused to get vaccinated because of this guy, she's subscribed to the email list of this guy, Dr. Mercola, and I was really interested in who this guy is because he's spreading all this horrible information. Actually, I found out that he sells supplements and vitamins and he says that's the cure. He's telling people not to get vaccinated and then selling them this alternative, it's really snake oil. He's just a really crummy guy, honestly.

I was really disturbed to see that Joe Rogan had it on his podcast, and then he addressed the controversy on Instagram and a video, and he said he basically backs up Mercola and says he defends him, which is really disturbing to me because he used to see both sides, and now it's to the point where-- like your last segment, you brought up the Atlantic article, which was would you say there's-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the vax deniers-

Jasper: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: -basically engaging in human sacrifice.

Jasper: Exactly. This woman I knew, she's in her 80s, and I actually spoke to-- she said, "I know if I get COVID, I will die," because she has all these other ailments, she's a immunodeficiency or whatever. It's really disturbing because she says, "I know I'll die but I'm not going to get it because this guy tells me," and then Joe Rogan has him on his podcast, and it's really just totally, it's offensive. I don't subscribe to Spotify, but I wouldn't support him and I think that what Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are doing is the right choice, and I hope other artists do the same.

Brian Lehrer: Jasper, thank you very much for your call. I know you got to go in a minute, Ashley, you wrote on The Verge, "Spotify didn't discover Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan didn't create Spotify, but their union portends the future of a closed podcasting ecosystem." Give us a vision of that future. Beyond Joe Rogan and this controversy, what is this closed podcasting ecosystem, and what are its implications for listeners or for democracy?

Ashley Carman: Without getting too wonky in all the tech, podcasting has traditionally operated through something called RSS feeds, and podcast players like Apple Podcast as an example, essentially pulled up these links, these RSS feeds, and operated as a search engine like Google Search. You were searching within the podcast app to find your show, which was an RSS feed or a link.

When Spotify really came on the scene, it doesn't support RSS feeds, you can't insert an RSS feed like a private one or anything like that. Instead, they signed these exclusive deals, meaning that Joe Rogan is hosted on their platform. You can only listen on his platform on their platform and he doesn't have an RSS feed anymore. Meaning, essentially, you can't listen to him anywhere else other than Spotify.

This gets to the whole issue where, when you can't listen to podcasts elsewhere, you end up where everyone's upset because Rogan fans are like, "I don't want Spotify taking any hand in what Rogan says." Whereas other people on the other side are like, "Well, Spotify should be taking a much heavier hand because he's exclusive and they pay him." I'm basically making the argument that where we were before where anyone could listen more through a search engine and links was a more effective system and an easier system and one that appeased everybody, I think.

Brian Lehrer: We have to leave it there for today with Ashley Carman, C-A-R-M-A-N, senior reporter at The Verge, writer of the Hot Pod newsletter, breaker of some important parts of this story about Spotify as you've been hearing. Ashley, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Ashley Carman: Thank you.

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