Why Did Spotify License Joe Rogan If They Don’t Actually Want Him?

The controversy over Joe Rogan and Spotify is still ongoing at time of writing, with Spotify quietly deleting seventy episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience from their platform since the beginning of February. As of writing, Spotify has refused to carry over one hundred episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, despite giving the man an exclusive licensing deal worth one hundred million dollars. Very few of the episodes Spotify has removed were recorded after this licensing deal, meaning Spotify could have easily listened to these episodes and simply decided they did not want Rogan under their license, but they did not — and it makes you wonder why Spotify even bothered to license Rogan when it appears they didn’t actually want Joe Rogan.

Of course, the fact that Spotify didn’t quite get why people liked Rogan became obvious pretty quickly. In September 2020, just a couple of months after the deal between Rogan and Spotify was announced, it was found that Spotify had deleted Rogan’s episodes with people like Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes, both of whom are far-right commentators (McInnes was one of the founders of the Proud Boys). Mind you, the fact that Rogan was willing to talk to people like that — people who very rarely get any airtime in mainstream media outlets — is part of the appeal of his podcast. Just as Phil…