After nearly a week of controversy, Daniel Ek ended up speaking out. The CEO of Spotify, the Swedish streaming giant, issued a press releaseand announced a series of measures, Sunday January 30, when the two musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell announced that they were withdrawing their songs from the huge music file platform.
They blame Spotify for its inaction in spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic on its platform, claiming that the Swedish company is letting “to spread lies that cost lives”, as Joni Mitchell states. For his part, Neil Young directly targeted Joe Rogan, presenter of “The Joe Rogan Experience”, Spotify’s most popular podcast, in which the 54-year-old presenter has invited all kinds of guests since 2004.
Early January, 270 doctors had signed an open letter asking Spotify to take action against misinformation after the broadcast of an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” in which Robert Malone was invited, who presents himself as the inventor of messenger RNA vaccines, and who has since campaigned against their effectiveness in the Covid-19 pandemic. 19.
If, in the midst of all this, Spotify’s stock market value plummeted last weekthe place of Joe Rogan within Spotify has however never really been in danger, argue several titles of the American press.
The podcast bet
After growing up with music, Spotify decided to bet on podcasts, notes the American site Wired. “Between 2010 and 2021, the share of 12-year-olds who listened to a podcast in the last month increased from 12% to 41% in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center »explains Sophie Hatte, lecturer in economics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Lyon, who notes that “Spotify has started to invest heavily in the podcast industry”.
The reason is obviously economic: “The podcast industry is a growing sector, confirms Sophie Hatte. Advertising revenues for this industry were 37% higher in 2020 compared to 2019 and this represented $842 million [748 millions d’euros] in the USA. According to some projections, this figure should exceed two billion in 2022.” “Spotify has invested in the various links of the podcast industry chain, she continues. With the acquisition of Anchor, a start-up whose core business was to make it easier to create podcasts, but also with buyouts and exclusives. »
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