Spotify has also promised to spend $100m on content from creators from historically marginalised backgrounds. The scrutiny led to the unearthing of numerous past episodes where Mr Rogan used racial slurs and made crude jokes about gender and sexuality, prompting the comedian and MMA commentator to publicly apologise and request a number of past episodes to be taken down. The scandal resulted in Spotify publishing its content guidelines for the first time, as well as attaching a disclaimer to Covid-related content with links to scientifically validated information.īut the issues didn’t stop there. Guests spreading Covid misinformation, as well as Mr Rogan’s own comments doubting the necessity for vaccinating young adults, inspired outrage from scientists, condemnation from Spotify partners like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as well as boycotts from top artists like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young earlier this year. In recent months, however, Spotify’s big bet on Joe Rogan has started to become a complicated matter for the Swedish company. There are now over 3.5 million podcasts on Spotify, which made up more than 12 per cent of the company’s revenue from ad-supported content in 2021. The company, whose stock jumped 17 per cent when the Rogan deal was announced, now sees podcasts as a major way to compete with big tech companies like Apple and Google, as well as fellow streamers like Netflix.

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