Lost in this debate heated by the flame of its own dumpster fire is that no one, Spotify included, is talking about the company’s killer feature, what made it so popular in the first place: leveraging the cloud and the information listeners put into that cloud to create a better and more specialized music-listening experience for its users. Maybe this is an opportunity for Spotify to reclaim that value proposition. It chased what must have seemed like an easy user acquisition play in the highly lucrative bro market at the cost of not only cultural blowback, but also neglect of its primary value proposition. Now it has flown a bit too close to the sun. It wasn’t enough that Spotify changed how we listen to music, it had to change how we consume everything audio.
The man was a stand-up comedian first, after all, a line of work that lends itself to easy cancellation (as witnessed by fellow tradeswoman Whoopi Goldberg).Ĭaught up in its ambitious and now possibly tragic goal of becoming, with apologies to pre-Rogan lightning rod Howard Stern, the king of all audio media, Spotify’s biggest mistake was going all-in on podcasts and chasing a market it apparently didn’t yet fully understand. The pressure on Rogan and Spotify intensified last weekend over Rogan’s repeated use of a racial slur, along with a few other inflammatory statements that cannot simply be dismissed with the counterargument of “context.” If that isn’t enough for Spotify to eat whatever money is needed to ditch Rogan, then surely the risk that other offensive material will be found in the archives of Rogan’s podcast or comedic output should be. The Zoomers don’t care and are scrolling through TikTok. Powerful millennials Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift, despite pleas from all corners, have opted for nonintervention when either could end the business scandal of the day whenever they wanted.
He comes off as an inquisitive and nonconfrontational, but also politically incorrect, slacker-wing personality involuntarily thrust into the role of culture warrior when he would rather be doing MMA, DMT, or some other acronymic pursuit. The all-ages battle royale kicked off with Boomers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell utilizing that most 1960s form of mobilization and persuasion-boycott and protest-to try and get Spotify to deplatform Rogan. Also unfortunately for Spotify, the controversy is tailor-made for generational division.
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