
Spotify signs ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ to an exclusive multi-year deal - mmq
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/19/spotify-signs-the-joe-rogan-experience-to-an-exclusive-multi-year-deal/
======
busymom0
I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him
moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons:

1\. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban
Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't
like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.

2\. Currently, Spotify doesn't have video (except album cover clips which
occasionally show up). I prefer JRE's video format instead of audio. Think of
Elon smoking weed on video vs on audio - very different. Seems like Spotify
might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know
what we will be getting.

3\. "Exclusive" deals in the podcast world is bad. Podcasts were supposed to
be platform independent audio files. Making things exclusive is going
backwards.

4\. Spotify is not available in many countries.

5\. Spotify's desktop player isn't the best imo. Their web player is only for
audio so far, so they need to make major changes.

~~~
GoofballJones
Alex Jones being kicked off those services isn't the same thing. He was
spreading major misinformation and targeted harassment at innocent people that
were involved in a tragedy. He wasn't "conspired" against. They just told him
to go host his hate somewhere else.

And stop with these "censorship" BS. Alex Jones has every right to start his
own network if he wants and put anything on it. There's nothing stopping him
from doing it. But there is also zero reason why another private company has
to be forced to carry something they don't want to. Free speech doesn't mean
everyone is forced to listen to that speech. Why not say that CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS
are also "conspiring" against him too because they don't carry his show? OMG,
Nickelodeon doesn't carry Alex Jones! They're censoring him!

Come on.

~~~
chroma
You are conflating two forms of free speech: The right to freedom of speech
enshrined in the constitution and the norm of free speech that we all tend to
grant each other. Of course YouTube is a private company and can ban and
delete whatever they want. But they are breaking a norm and the consequences
of that may be worse than the consequences of letting us watch videos of crazy
people.

I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it: The original formulations of
freedom of speech weren't about protecting the rights of the speaker or
writer. They were about protecting the rights of those who wanted to listen or
read. Every time you ban a document or silence a speaker, you are also
preventing people from reading what they want to read or hearing what they
want to hear. That harm is far greater than whatever happens to the author.

Again, YouTube is a private company and they can do whatever they want when it
comes to curating the information they store. I would be against any law that
compelled them to host information that they didn't want to host. But in the
long run, I think their current policy is extremely counterproductive. Imagine
if YouTube existed 30 years ago. Would they have banned atheist views? Would
they have banned videos critical of Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky
scandal? What about videos endorsing transgender ideas? Many views that were
considered crazy at that time are now acceptable today. Suppressing heterodox
views means that fewer are exposed to them and moral progress is impeded. Yes,
most fringe ideas are bullshit, but every once in a while we stumble onto a
diamond: Slavery is wrong. Men and women should have the same rights.
Homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals. Etc. These were all
_extremely_ controversial ideas when they first came into the public sphere.
Earlier versions of our society suppressed them as dangerous misinformation.

So far, we haven't figured out a way to separate good ideas from bad ones
besides exposing people to them and seeing which memes reproduce in the
population. In other words: If you ban people like Alex Jones, you also ban
people who are activists for causes that society will adopt in the future. And
we all end up worse off.

There are certainly views that we hold today that future generations will
condemn us for. Better that we discover them sooner rather than later.

~~~
willis936
You know who else breaks norms? Alex Jones when he peddles lies and threatens
lives for profit. He needs to play by society’s rules if he wants to play by
society’s rules. You can’t just pick and choose which norms you’re entitled
to. That’s called being an asshole and 10 times out of 10 you will be shown
the door. There’s a reason no one cried over him getting the boot. It isn’t an
indication of some chilling dystopia. It’s society operating as it should.

~~~
darawk
Nobody wants to be in the position of defending Alex Jones. He's totally
indefensible. But that is always how these things start. Once you start
regulating content on the basis of factual accuracy, you put these companies
in the position of making decisions about political truth, and that is an
extremely dangerous thing.

These are really hard ethical questions, and I think both views are reasonable
and understandable. But ultimately I think it's more dangerous to put Google
in charge of regulating truth. It feels like a win in the short term to ban
Alex Jones, and it _is_ a win in the short term. But the long term
consequences of things like this are really really important, and the fact
that they're obscured by distance doesn't make them any less so.

~~~
bildung
_> But that is always how these things start._

There is no automatism. In many countries hate speech is forbidden, without
them devolving into a dictatorship.

~~~
darawk
I think that's pretty arguable. Hate speech laws in the UK have been used in
pretty questionable ways:

[https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/stephen-birrell-s-
convic...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/stephen-birrell-s-conviction-
shames-scotland)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
leeds-19883828](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-19883828)

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/03/satanic-
isla...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/03/satanic-islam-
belfast-preacher-james-mcconnell-says-will-go-jail-protect-free-speech)

This is just a small selection. Obviously the UK has not "devolved into a
dictatorship", but it is clearly censoring non-violent political speech.

~~~
simonh
Birrell and Ahmed's convictions seems to go too far, they didn't actual incite
violence or criminal activity and I think that's an important line. Is 'I hope
they die' reasonably interpretable as incitement to kill? I'd say no, but is
it hate speech? I'd have to say yes so from a legalistic point of view the
prosecutions may have been legitimate. The concept of hate speech is a
slippery slope though.

On the Satanic Islam case, the guy was acquitted on all charges so I don't
think that supports your argument.

Anyway thank you for your last comment. I agree some of these cases went too
far, but that doesn't mean we're some kind of oppressive police state. Neither
of the two people convicted in these cases deserve any sympathy, in a broader
moral sense they deserved everything they got, but at the cost of an erosion
of our civil liberty protections at the margins that I hope we don't come to
regret.

~~~
darawk
Ya I don't want to make it out to be more than it is. It's certainly not an
oppressive police state. But is it chilling speech a bit at the margin? I'm
not sure that the answer is yes, but i'm also not sure that the answer is no,
and that is concerning to me.

------
slg
I don't listen to his show, but as a general podcast fan this is sad. This
isn't the first podcast to move away from having a free and open feed of the
show, but it is certainly the biggest and it opens the doors for a lot more
exclusivity deals in the future.

~~~
whalesalad
Why is this sad? To me it illustrates that there is a lot of value in Spotify
as a delivery mechanism and that the existing channels are not working.

If anything it should inspire creative new solutions to the issue.

~~~
CraftThatBlock
The main problem is Spotify isn't a podcast app. I don't listen to music like
I do podcast, and I don't want my queue there because music would mix in, and
it can easily reset.

Also, most "real" podcast app have better playback options. I want to be able
to see chapters, and skip silence, but forcing to use Spotify for an open
format is bad for everyone. Podcasts are great _because_ they are open, and
give you choices in playback apps.

~~~
xmprt
I have a Spotify subscription but I still won't listen to podcasts on Spotify.
If Spotify hosted the audio and offered an RSS feed this wouldn't be as bad.

------
pc2g4d
Article really goes out of its way to let you know why you're supposed to hate
Joe Rogan...

I think it's probably a good move for his bank account but will piss off a lot
of his fans. I casually follow him on Youtube, just watching clips mostly but
occasionally full interviews. I never use Spotify for spoken word or video---
and I probably won't follow him there.

~~~
shoulderfake
I listen to his podcast all the time both audio and video versions on YT and I
dont see what the big deal is, so I open spotify instead of youtube and click
JRE.

~~~
vborovikov
Well, spotify.com tells me this: "Spotify is currently not available in your
country."

------
Ididntdothis
This quote caught my eye:

"At the time, the Human Rights Campaign said Sanders “must reconsider” the
endorsement, stating that Rogan has “attacked transgender people, gay men,
women, people of color and countless marginalized groups at every
opportunity.”"

If they attack somebody like Rogan in this way, it's no wonder that a lot of
people are getting tired of political correctness and move the other
direction.

~~~
free_rms
The kicker is, they got their way, and we've got notable woke icon.. checks
notes.. Joe Biden as the nominee instead.

~~~
willis936
Spoiler effect: rendered. This why it’s important to stick to your own party
if you need to keep FPTP. An echo chamber is literally better than being
interfered with.

Were any good points made? Did anyone learn anything? No. It was just a facade
to help their own tribe.

------
jccalhoun
If this was a podcast that I listened to, I would be mad. I want podcasts to
be in my podcast app. I listen to them mostly on my phone and I don't have
spotify on my phone. I don't want to install and open a separate program just
for one show.

It also irritates me off when I see a podcast mentioned online and they only
give an itunes link. I am an android user. Yes, most of the shows are in
pocketcast's directory if I search for it but only putting an itunes link
makes it more work for me and less likely to bother.

~~~
saagarjha
I'm mad and I don't even really listen to Joe Rogan. Podcasts should be open:
they're just RSS!

~~~
m463
Well the rss does redirect through a bunch of metrics-tracking urls.

------
nikivi
Ben Thompson & James Allworth had a nice discussion recently on the podcasting
space and how Spotify is posed to close over this space.

[https://overcast.fm/+BihnTujyQ](https://overcast.fm/+BihnTujyQ)

Disregarding over all the negatives of centralizing podcast discovery in one
place, I would love to pay one fee and get 0 ads on all the episodes. Where
the money is then distributed to the podcast hosts I listen to the most (like
Spotify does already with music).

It's so bizzare to me how ads are still a thing. I never ever bought anything
from an ad (my mind subconsciously ignores everything I hear in an ad & often
paints the product in the ad in a negative light). And I lose quite a chunk of
my time speeding over (the _same_ ads) in the episodes I listen too.

~~~
r00fus
Spotify is free with ads though. So it's more like Joe isn't running his own
ad program, but instead letting Spotify run the ads, or provide premium ad-
free tier.

~~~
nikivi
Sure, I'd love to have a model where if you don't pay a premium fee, you get
the ads as part of the episode. However if you do pay, those ads go away.

Although it does question who would pay to put ads in the first place if you
can _skip_ them. And people that will pay to skip are ones you want to target.

I hope there is a model that can work that makes ads worse off than
alternatives as they are cancer.

~~~
haihaibye
Spotify runs intentionally annoying and frequent ads for itself, saying
they'll go away if you pay them. I pay, it's very cheap for how much I use it.

------
toofy
Rogan’s claim to be doing this as message to Youtube is silly. He’s signing a
contract to do a “podcast” with spotify where his “podcast” will not be a
podcast at all. Podcasts are not platform specific. They’re open and
distributed to any app which can read the RSS file.

This is nothing but an act on his part to appeal to the outrage brigade.

Re spotify, theyve been heavily ramping up their podcasts lately and doing
exclusive/semi-exclusive content all over the place. If you care about the
health of our podcast ecosystem, fight this any way you can–podcasts need to
remain open. Our current trajectory is a straight line path to paying for
podcasts which will have forced ads to go along with paying for them. That’s
the road we’re on.

~~~
coding_lobster
I've never heard about the "podcast" quality being conditioned on platform
availability.

~~~
afiori
It is likely not in the definition, but "Spotify-exclusive podcast" sounds a
lot like "Chrome-only website".

They are podcasts and websites respectively, they just go against the
effective spirit of the medium.

~~~
iterati
Do they? Podcast, to me, is a talk show on the internet.

~~~
afiori
The distribution model of podcast has always been peculiar. A podcast is a
radio show live or not distributed on the internet.

Its distribution model mimics that of radio shows archives, that for the
internet means RSS-like

------
beshrkayali
This is pretty strange coming from a dude who talks about how corporatism and
monopolies are bad for us regular humans in every other episode. Either he's
planning something or he just sold out. Either way, podcasting will stay as
long we keep it alive. Rogan wants to move to a closed ecosystem, fine, that's
one less podcast for me to subscribe to!

Edit: one thing we can do as consumers is to stop paying for a company that's
trying to take over an open medium.

~~~
lonelappde
Is Spotify a monopoly?

~~~
tpxl
Exclusive deals are monopolies by definition.

~~~
tehwebguy
That’s not what anyone means by monopoly, every TV show and film starts as
exclusive and opens up with “windowing” until distribution is ubiquitous.

~~~
tpxl
Doesn't make it not a monopoly and it's still bad for consumers (on the first
order, on the second order allegedly it enables the producers to create more
content).

------
sdan
Joe initially said he didn't want to go to Spotify because they don't pay
creators.

I guess a few million made that thought go away.

~~~
jakarta
a few million? I would guess ~$100mm

~~~
ProAm
More than that, I think he brings in 30mm a year on his own, for a multiyear
deal I bet its way over 200mm

------
css
This makes me incredibly sad: not that we are losing Rogan's show, but that
Adtech is finally absorbing the last type of media that was truly Free.

~~~
sida
Adtech would actually make it free. Arguably this is more like cable / Netflix
than adtech

~~~
MikusR
You have to pay for cable / Netflix. Spotify is free (with ads).

~~~
fastball
I pay for Spotify and don't get ads, so its not really adtech for me.

~~~
Slippery_John
Paying for Spotify does not imply that they cease spying on you, only that
they aren't using that information to serve you ads on their platform.

------
overkill28
That's too bad, I hope at least the old episodes remain on YouTube.

Not only because it is simple and easy and free to find and listen to the
episodes, but the associated visual content (clips, reactions) is good too.

Would Elon's blunt hit have been nearly as entertaining in purely audio form?

~~~
bb2018
Spotify is rolling out video podcasts. Clips like that will still make their
way to YouTube and other platforms (as they announced). However, you are right
that making it harder to find and listen to will shrink its audience even if
more economically sustainable. It reminds me a lot of Howard Stern leaving
radio for satellite.

~~~
jumpman500
Really? They might be able to legitimately compete with Youtube. I watch a lot
of podcast clips on Youtube but would much rather view it ad-free on Spotify.

~~~
alexmingoia
You can view YouTube ad-free by paying, just like Spotify.

~~~
jumpman500
True. But I'd never pay for ad-free Youtube. Gladly already paying for
Spotify.

------
mark_l_watson
Too bad, I occasionally enjoy his show, depending on the guest.

I don’t use Spotify and I won’t bother with an account just for Joe. I hope he
is getting good revenue from Spotify to make up for loss of listeners. I
discovered him from Apple’s podcast app.

------
kixkin
This is a place where the JRE technical ignorance (or disregard) screws the
audience despite the recent episode with Adam Curry. The beauty of 'podcasts'
is the open RSS publishing and subscription. The content creator controls
their feed with ease. Forcing people to get the show through a corporate
infrastructure is completely contradicting the feeling and (what I thought)
the philosophy of the show is (was).

I discourage people from having apps like FB and other apps that pretend to be
one thing and do a whole helluva lot more. The pirate ship that was JRE will
now be another shill/cog in a bigger grinder. Will the market hold them to any
particular standard? I say the thing that brought you over 8M subs should be
enough. Grinding and squeezing all the pennies out of it seems unreasonable
here.

Just an example of ONE problem being part of the lefty corporate structure is
the question: How many 'questionable' or 'offensive' references will be self-
censored going forward?

------
jpalomaki
This might be a big thing. I think audio is kind of underused medium. We have
podcasts, audio books and music, but there’s much more that could be done.
Like radio theater, documentaries, talk shows. Professionally produced audio
content can be really enjoyable experience.

Production costs for audio stuff are less than for video. Our busy lives have
limits for video consumption, but I think there’s still room for more audio
content. Audio you can consume while doing something else. Combine it with
taking a walk and you feel good for yourself - compare that to spending a hour
on sofa with Netflix.

~~~
raverbashing
Not disagreeing too much, but I really think podcasts have a limited
"parallelism" to them

Sure, you can do the dishes or go for a walk and listen to podcasts.

But it's impossible to do anything mildly intellectual or that requires some
attention

------
icpmacdo
Rogan said in his instagram post the podcast will stay free, I don’t think
this will drive down listenership. With spotify hosting the content he will be
able to have Jamie pull up lots more because of fair use, YouTube’s ContentId
won’t pull the videos and steal the ad revenue. I think this is the biggest
motivation for the move as he is often frustrated with that issues. Also
continuing to put clips on YouTube will continue to grow the audience. I’d
love to know how much the deal was worth, I bet somewhere around 150 million a
year for 3-5 years.

~~~
dleslie
Platform shifts are enough to lose significant viewership.

~~~
anjc
It work the opposite way too, wherein platforms lose users due to undesired
changes. YouTube's banning/striking/demonitizatation of high profile channels,
something that Joe often says he's afraid of, could be seen as an undesirable
platform change.

------
cableshaft
If that means he's no longer going to be on YouTube, that's going to suck.
That's been the only way I've been watching/listening the show for awhile now.

And it's going to be a lot more out-of-sight, out-of-mind for a lot of people
if it's not up there with their normal YouTube video browsing. I'm sure they
got a ton of money up front for that deal though.

~~~
biesnecker
From his post about it on IG:

> We will still have clips up on YouTube but full versions of the show will
> only be on Spotify after the end of the year.

:-(

~~~
bootlooped
Does Spotify play video though? I have seen those little looping background
animations they have for some songs, but I have never seen a full blown music
video or podcast video on there.

EDIT: I see a "Podcasts & Videos" category, so I guess there are.

------
nostromo
This seems like short-term thinking from Joe.

I'm sure he got paid big time. But his audience will shrink massively and
he'll become a niche personality.

It'll be similar to what happened to Howard Stern when he went to satellite
radio; he quickly faded into relative obscurity.

~~~
hombre_fatal
He's not shrinking by moving to one of the most ubiquitous apps in the world.
You're just going to see some brief internet rage before people type "rogan"
into the Spotify app they already have running all day.

That is nothing like XM radio where I've never met someone who said they had
it.

~~~
im_cynical
I'm a casual watcher of his show (maybe 1 show every few weeks). Spotify has
made no investment into their platform to support podcasts. No notification
system for new episodes, no already listened to tracking, no subscriptions or
an area where i can find all my podcasts.

I like the idea of having my music and podcasts all in one place which working
across all my devices (Linux, iOS, Windows) and i gave up on them. Spotify may
be ubiquitous but they're not engineered for podcasts.

------
tantalor
This explanation does not really make sense:

> Bringing the JRE to Spotify will mean that the platform’s more than 286
> million active users will have access to one of culture’s leading voices.

Spotify has podcasts, JRE is a podcast, so I assume those users already have
access to JRE before this deal.

> By partnering with Spotify, Rogan and his team will enjoy the support of the
> world’s leading audio platform.

Vague. What can JRE do now they couldn't do before?

~~~
moz14015
Make a lot more money.

------
type0
The final blow to RSS, podcasting remained one of the last strongholds of free
distribution and now even that is being locked down in corporate silos.

------
DevKoala
I probably will never watch it now since I don’t have a Spotify subscription
and don’t need one. Is Spotify free for Podcasts?

~~~
davismwfl
He said in the announcement his podcast is remaining free. I don't know if you
have to register with Spotify to listen, but I would think you would.

~~~
xnyan
That’s the whole point, killing open podcast distribution. They want the only
viable place to get podcasts to be the Spotify app which they control.

------
zethraeus
...and this is how podcasting dies.

~~~
karl11
Just like how TV shows died once they became exclusive to one network or
streaming service!

~~~
zethraeus
Just like how the blog-web died with walled gardens.

TV shows were always centrally distributed.

------
PopeDotNinja
That sounds like he won't be on YouTube anymore. Shame. I don't really like
using Spotify.

------
Barrin92
It says he has creative freedom but would they seriously let him bring Alex
Jones back on the podcast under the Spotify banner?

Personally I think that's probably a good thing because I find mainstreaming
conspiracy theorists completely awful but I really don't know what it'll do to
his fanbase given that they were big on this whole independence and do what
you want brand that he had going on

~~~
wayoutthere
He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how
exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he
could do would generate sufficient outrage.

~~~
hackinthebochs
When widespread outrage is measured simply by twitter likes, I feel there is
no end to the outrage machine. The cost of participating is zero while the
dopamine hit of lending your support to some presumed moral issue non-zero.
And therein lies the problem with adjudicating moral issues through social
media. There is zero cost to join in the mob and so these tempests appear to
be much stronger than they actually are. If there were a tangible cost to
signing on to these outrage mobs, there would be much fewer of them and it
would also be a more accurate metric.

~~~
wayoutthere
I think the real problem started in the early '10s, when mainstream
journalists got lazy af and just started combing Facebook and Twitter for
material rather than doing actual journalism. It started with "crowdsourced"
journalism like photos and videos of actual notable events, but devolved into
internet drama stuff pretty quickly.

Many people saw what was happening and started treating Twitter as a
legitimate news source to try and 'scoop' the major news outlets. Once it was
obvious that being on Twitter gave you an outsized voice, it attracted all
sorts of bad actors.

The 2016 election really threw it into overdrive though. Part of me wonders if
Trump's whole Twitter strategy is to rile up the left because most of his base
is old people on Facebook or Nextdoor. The young edgelords who were already
using Twitter didn't take any of it seriously because they were just using it
to troll people with 4chan memes about using bleach as eyedrops anyway.

------
chaoticmass
I am guessing Joe didn't learn anything from his recent guest Adam Curry.

Episode:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaPKrZTUoUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaPKrZTUoUs)

------
peruvian
Guessing this is the beginning of the end of podcasting being an open medium
backed by RSS, at least for "big" shows.

~~~
redisman
Definitely. The more passive participants in this space (mainly Apple) have
extremely deep pockets to start defending the amount of content on their
platform. I wouldn't be surprised if the RSS method will be niche by next year
and it's all walled gardens for the top 1000 podcasts.

------
RandyRanderson
Note that the old clips WILL NOT remain on youtube at the end of the year. At
least that's what he said in the Patton Oswald intro.

He's been a critic of yt's policies for a while. I hope that he comments on
whether this is a purely monetary call or, in some part, due to those
policies. Maybe he or Jamie-pedia read hn? :>

------
dave84
This reminds me of Howard Stern’s move to Sirius.

I would love if Spotify would allow podcast creators to set music breaks and
play my music in between some of the more segmented podcast episodes.

------
tinyhouse
Never understood why his podcast such a hit. I mean, I like the guy, and he's
knowledgeable about MMA. But he's not someone I care to listen to on other
topics.

~~~
bengale
I find the guests pretty interesting most of the time and it tends to be laid
back as he doesn’t get confrontational with people. It helps that’s he’s a
funny guy and can carry a conversation with pretty much anyone.

------
l1ghthouse
For me it’s bye bye Joe Rogan and not hello Spotify.

~~~
different_sort
_big exhale_ Woah.

~~~
klondike_klive
"you silly goose"

------
ioseph
One of my favourite podcasts recently went exclusively to Spotify. Despite
paying for premium I've stopped listening.

The podcast experience is awful on Spotify, by far the worst fault is progress
gets forgotten, which is completely unacceptable.

------
mcintyre1994
Is their player anywhere near as good as Overcast? Can you sync them on Apple
Watch to listen to without the phone? I quit Spotify because you couldn’t do
that with the music, so I’m guessing probably not?

~~~
flixic
It’s much more primitive. No silence skipping, no voice boost, and most
importantly, show notes are hidden and don’t really support HTML.

Spotify is hurting podcasting and a lot of what is good about the open
ecosystem with diverse clients.

------
plainbrain
The way I see it, some positives to come out of this:

-Will be fun again to hear "Jamie pull that up" and actually be able to see the content in question on video without any awkwardness.

-Competition for Youtube is needed. This is a massive channel moving ship, may lead others to follow.

-Having controversial guests/topics won't be such a big deal (Assuming Spotify is less beholden to advertisers than youtube because of its premium memberships - for now)

-A smaller audience is not a such a bad thing for Joe, esp if $ is still guaranteed in this exclusive deal. Slightly less eye balls on him, and in turn, less social responsibility, scrutiny and pressure from pseudo justice warriors.

Negatives:

-Exclusivity is in itself a form of censorship. Spotify is yet another company silo that relies on a proprietary ecosystem and pay-walling content.

-You may have to sit through 20 spotify ads in a 3hr podcast (if you don't have premium). Or worse, maybe spotify is not even available in your country.

-Sets a bad precedent, especially given that JRE was always at the forefront of promoting accessibility and openness. This is a move in the other direction, supporting a pay walled, ad-infested solution that is known to underpay artists. A platform that Joe himself was criticizing heavily just a year or two ago...

------
anoraca
If it's not on the Apple Podcasts app I won't be listening to it any longer.
Ah well, probably better to support smaller podcasters with my listening time.

------
gherkinnn
Well that's unfortunate. I just got in to watching his full interviews.

Good thing Techcrunch reminded me just how evil he is. That way I avoid
downloading Spotify.

------
wooger
Regardless of what you think of Rogan ,this is horrible news for podcasts and
independent internet culture in general.

Podcasts can easily be entirely free of platforms, networks, editorial control
and reliance on advertising, and many of them still are. I hope that at some
point we can stop calling anything that doesn't have an rss/atom feed pointing
to audio files a podcast, as they don't deserve that name.

I've already abandoned one podcast which moved to Spotify exclusive (The last
podcast on the left) out of principle.

Re the view of Rogan, I find it fascinating that Joe is viewed as some kind of
right wing chauvinistic demagogue because he has a few controversial guests,
and states views in line with 99.9% of the worlds population.

Contrast with someone like Louis Theroux, who has repeatedly visited and
palled around with all sorts of controversial people, including white
supremacists, Joe Exotic & the Westboro baptist church, all while holding onto
an entirely neutral reputation.

~~~
st1ck
OTOH it's kinda good news for podcasters, because it frees up a spot in the
itunes top.

------
sambe
Who started this "exclusive" nonsense? This article suggests Spotify made some
moves before Apple started:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20696666/apple-podcast-
ex...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20696666/apple-podcast-exclusive-
funding-bloomberg-spotify)

------
boromi
Does this mean it will no longer be on Youtube? That really sucks because I
like reading the comments even if they are 90% banter.

------
icebr9
It's 2020 and I can't set the content language in Spotify to other language
than my native.

It's literally impossible for me in Europe to discover any american podcast
becasue I all the categories for podcasts are full of my native language only
content.

Same with music playlists by spotify - they are mix between English and my
Native language -> shite.

------
tams
With RSS/Atom, the history so far is that any use case of open feeds that gets
popular enough is eventually consumed by platforms, with the feeds
discontinued.

Same with podcasts: the current open golden age always felt like was going to
be temporary and so far Spotify looks like the most likely player to eat the
mainstream.

------
aww_dang
Spotify always asks me to sign in or tells me that I can't listen to embedded
media in a given country. I've never successfully played any media they've
hosted.

Easier and simpler to download or stream elsewhere with no signup or red tape.

I suspect this is more about the money for Rogan. His content isn't essential
for me. He often has contradictory takes as he seeks to placate his guests.
That's fine for his particular interview format, but his inconsistency
combined with censorship grandstanding and an exclusive contract strikes me as
opportunist.

He's never been known as someone who speaks truth to power. If anything he's a
conformist who wears his derision of conformism on his shirtsleeves. Feels
like this is mostly to placate his audience.

Good on him, I hope he continues to earn money with his brand.

------
wayneftw
So I won't be able to watch the full episodes on YouTube any longer?

Where will the videos be hosted?

Answer to my own question: Spotify began testing video podcasting last year
according to The Verge - [https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21263927/joe-
rogan-spotif...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21263927/joe-rogan-
spotify-experience-exclusive-content-episodes-youtube)

I guess now I'm wondering if all of his existing clips and episodes will
disappear from YouTube? I would think not... but I don't ever recall finding
any podcast on Spotify from a Google search result. Findability might take a
hit.

------
oldsklgdfth
I listen to the podcast because of the diverse and interesting guests that are
on there sometimes.

It's interesting to watch how a guy that kinda rambles with some friends
mostly, created a following, turned his side hustle into an income and now
he's really cashing in.

Idk to what extent he worked hard to develop this business. But I suspect it's
mostly him making people feels comfortable to table about what they know. If
there is someone working on this I would guess the cohost - Jamie - is doing
the heavy googling.

------
watermelon0
Free or not, Spotify is still not available in some countries.

I know that only a tiny minority of people is affected by this, but I still
don't like that they chose geo-restricted service. :/

~~~
arkitaip
People will probably mirror the podcast all over the web.

------
heinrichhartman
“attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of color and countless
marginalized groups at every opportunity.”

What a gross misrepresentation. Have the listened to any of his shows?

~~~
jackric
> every opportunity

There's your bullshit indicator

------
mythrwy
I sometimes listen to Joe Rogan using Rhythmbox audio player. Occasionally
I'll check the corresponding YouTube clip to see what the guest looks like.

I've never used Spotify and see no need to sign up for anything. If I can't
download/stream to open players I probably just won't listen anymore. There
are plenty of other good podcasts and books and, although I enjoy Rogan, he
does get a bit redundant after a bit so not that big of a loss.

------
jankassens
Spotify has been running an exclusive high-profile podcast in Germany for
multiple years now. It was previously running on radio and regular podcasts (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fest_%26_Flauschig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fest_%26_Flauschig)
)

It's surprising to me that popular, platform exclusive audio content isn't
happening faster. All video platforms have it.

~~~
MisterPea
Not many podcasts have the following and clout of JRE. Seems like the podcast
you mentioned in Germany has it as well.

But platform exclusive content is the exact opposite of what pretty much every
podcast listener wants. Someone in another comment mentioned how podcasts are
the last distribution of media thats completely open and this is the first big
step in the wrong direction.

------
godtoldmetodoit
They must be paying him a shitload. He has spoken with multiple guests about
how he loves being independent, having full control etc.

~~~
rtkwe
Or they've put a big enough sweetener in the contract that he's willing to
take the risk. A per episode contract with a buyout if he gets kicked off (to
cover losses while he reestablishes ad relationships when they kick him off)
would be pretty sweet.

------
brailsafe
So he's ending his podcast and starting a radio show. I mostly watched the
clips on YouTube and while I do subscribe to Spotify, I use PocketCasts for
Podcasts. Guess I'll be using YouTube less which is fine, and _maybe_ I'll
tube in for the occasional really interesting guest.

------
RaleyField
"Spotify is currently not available in your country."

Take my euros goddarnit. Probably fights involving licensing agreements, or
competition buying whole markets. I don't know if I should play at being an
international spy and buy VPN just for Rogan or just pirate it out of the
general principle.

------
_Mark
This is a huge changing of the guard play. You have to give credit towards
Spotify for this move, and what could signify a pivotal point in changing
history.

The fact there is a paying subscription model behind Spotify, I can see a
future where all podcasts move towards this platform.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
To be clear you don't need to subscribe to Spotify to use it to play podcasts.
They don't even play ads.

From their point of view it's presumably a loss-leader that gives them brand
awareness.

------
dkobia
I absolutely love Spotify, but for some reason I just can't get with it on
podcasts. I'm not sure if it's the interface or maybe I just like to keep my
music and podcasting separate? They're both audio yes -- but completely
different somehow.

~~~
Balero
I agree. I find i don't always finish a podcast in one sitting, say half of it
on my way in to work.

Then I want to listen to music during the day/at the gym etc. But if I use the
same thing, then I lose my place in the podcast, and I can't start up again.

------
runawaybottle
Sounds a little bit like when Howard Stern first signed a deal to move from
terrestrial radio over to satellite radio.

If this brings in a lot more subscribers for top podcasts, then Spotify will
do what SiriusXM did with radio hosts, or what Netflix did with comedy
specials.

------
ecmascript
Sad, I don't have a spotify account I am for sure not gonna get one just to
listen to JRE. I hate this kind of shit in the podcasting world.

Right now, the overwhelming majority of podcasts are open and if it were to
change that would be a dark and sad day.

------
jokit
I hope and doubt this will change JRE much.

On the topic of libertarianism..

Almost all statists share some libertarian perspective on some issues. No
libertarian has statist perspective on any issues. There are a lot of self
proclaimed libertarians, Christians, Muslims, or people of any principle, who
are incorrect. Unlike "Republican" and "Democratic" which don't mean anything,
"libertarian" means something. You can claim you are "libertarian" just like
you can claim you're a "martian", but it doesn't make it so.

Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla are not the only two who mistakenly call themselves
"libertarian" at times. They just don't know what it means.

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any
circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason
whatever; nor will a libertarian advocate the initiation of force, or delegate
it to anyone else.

Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they
realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not
libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." — L. Neil Smith

~~~
rrrrrrrrrrrryan
This is a little "no true Scotsman," no?

Self-identification is probably the best indicator we've got for whether a
label applies to a person. If enough new people label themselves a thing, and
use the word to mean something different, I'd argue the word itself has begun
to change, or at least has aquired multiple definitions.

Coopting a label in the political sense sucks (see: "liberal"), but from a
linguistic perspective it's silly to pretend language doesn't evolve.

~~~
jokit
Like "Literally" "evolving" to mean "metaphorically"?

When "X" becomes "Not X", that's not evolution but coopting. It's degradation,
and it's often purposeful.

"Libertarian" means something, which is why the "Libertarian Party" required
an oath to adhere to the non-aggression principle. The fact that statists
moved in to ruin the "Libertarian Party", take the oath and betray it, may
make them "Libertarian Party" members, but doesn't make them libertarian (in
fact, the opposite).

Are you a Christian if you're not Christian but call yourself "Christian"? Are
you an atheist if you believe in a god? Are you "blind" if you have perfect
vision?

I realize that this assault on reality/truth is at the heart of many issues
today.. We have no language if things can mean both a thing, and/or the
opposite of that thing.

...which is the point.

You may have a libertarian perspective on an issue, or a group of issues (as
almost everyone does), but that doesn't make you libertarian, which means
liberty in all issues. There is a line between minarchist and anarchist, and a
reason for both terms.

~~~
krapp
>I realize that this assault on reality/truth is at the heart of many issues
today.. We have no language if things can mean both a thing, and/or the
opposite of that thing.

Contronyms exist in many languages[0]. They're not part of some nefarious
scheme to corrupt Libertarian identity or anything of the sort.

That _is_ how language works. The language you're typing your prescriptivist
nonsense in has become bastardized and corrupted from its Latin and Germanic
roots over generations, after all.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-
antonym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym)

------
cwhiz
That’s too bad. I ditched Spotify because they won’t release a proper Apple
Watch app with cellular streaming. I prefer to watch JRE so I guess this is
just going to be the end of me being able to legitimately consume this
content.

------
ravenstine
Half the fun of JRE is watching it! I hope this means that they will be
introducing video, but I'm guessing not. If JRE disappears from video form, a
part of the goodness of the universe will have died.

------
null0pointer
Time to archive all clips from Youtube and all old episodes from his website.

------
thorin
I always download JRE as an MP3 rather than use a podcast platform or
streaming service (or Youtube). Is this going to change that or is the MP3
still available? Joe must be making a frickin mint!

------
willis936
Selling quackery wasn’t paying off his mansion mortgage fast enough? Now
here’s a guy who sells out as fast as he possibly can. Fuck the message. Fuck
the medium. Just get the guy some money.

------
mikemotherwell
Does anyone have any inkling of what he was offered? Gimlet got hundreds of
millions for a barely breakeven business - what is the Howard Stern of
Podcasting worth on an exclusive deal?

------
r00fus
If it's on Spotify does it still count as a "podcast"?

~~~
rtkwe
So what in the definition of a podcast precludes it being available on one
platform?

~~~
karatestomp
RSS pointing to audio files versus a closed platform. Same way a WhatsApp
message isn't an email.

~~~
rtkwe
That's mixing the medium and the content to me like how Art Deco isn't just
architecture it's a style.

~~~
karatestomp
If they broadcast them over radio, is it still a podcast? Emailed out the
audio files to a mailing list? Distributed them on cassette tape? It seems to
me the format is part of it. RSS or something equivalent (Atom), feeding audio
files to whatever client you bring, is a podcast. Youtube videos aren't
podcasts just because I listen to them in the background (though one might
_also_ have a youtube video of one's podcasts) or because I _could_ youtube-dl
the audio and listen to it. The format is what gave it the name—if you can't
consume it in a podcast client, it's not a podcast. My physical mailbox and my
email box both contain pretty similar things, but my email reader can't read
my physical mail, because it's not email. If you send me a letter, I don't
receive an email, because you didn't send one. If you publish your audio
interviews in a closed platform, I can't receive a podcast, because you're not
publishing one.

~~~
rtkwe
The main thrust of what I'm saying is that RSS is a very very specific part of
just the distribution of the actual content. Everything except the RSS and use
any app is there on Spotify; the functionality of an open app (download,
speeds, RSS feeds etc.), the content style, etc.

Personally I'm not a fan of Spotify locking down podcasts because I do like
that I can use whatever app I like but I'm not going to call something not a
podcast because it's annoying to get.

------
vincentmarle
I’ve long wondered why Spotify hasn’t done this for music itself? Spotify is
in a great position for vertical integration: own the artist, own the content,
own the subscriber.

------
dolguldur
WSJ estimates this deal to be worth more than $100M.

I hope Joe Rogan has a plan for how to invest a good chunk of this for greater
good. IMHO this kind of sum comes with a responsibility to do something with
it that goes beyond your family and friends. (Like Tim Ferris does now for
psychedelics research).

Judging by how I perceive him from the show, I don’t think he’s just greedy
and wants that much for himself. Either there’s some detail in the contract
that allows him to break free in case Spotify tries to censor too hard. Or he
already has some longer-term thing in mind that he needs the capital for.

One nice detail is that they’d be free to play music.

------
fergie
Maybe a stupid question, but does this mean that the podcast will be audio-
only from the 1st september or will the videos still be published somewhere?

------
sida
I honestly don’t care. But Spotify podcasting is so shitty compares to
overcast.

The fact that music is mixed up with podcasts makes search and discovery much
much worse

------
multifasciatus
Makes sense, the success of bringing the Joe Budden Podcast no exclusively
last year opened the way for this.

Very interested to see how video will be on Spotify.

------
bencollier49
It was another Spotify podcast acquisition which led me to cancel them in
favour of Napster earlier this year, and I couldn't be happier.

------
anjc
It doesn't take much listening to JRE or similar shows to realise that they're
in constant fear of strikes and demonetization, even when talking about
mundane topics. Joe's no Alex Jones or David Icke, and he's still afraid of
getting more strikes on the channel. If this move means he can talk
comfortably then good for him. It's not as if listeners lose any rights in the
process.

Would this mean he could play artist's music that Spotify are allowed to
stream? Or would other agreements be needed for this?

------
sfgweilr4f
More likely Youtube are too difficult to work with and their ever-present-but-
arbitrary ban-hammer is becoming increasingly high friction.

------
mbalex99
This might be Europe’s answer to YouTube.

~~~
polski-g
Spotify is just as ban-happy as YouTube.

~~~
gganley
Links? Much more aware of the YouTube scene

~~~
busymom0
Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex
Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like
the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.

~~~
torartc
How many times are you going to post this same fear mongering comment.

------
clircle
Is different than when Howard Stern signed to Sirius XM? Seems like there is
some precedence.

------
kentf
100M+, Same with Bill Simmons on the Ringer. His was 86M I think, Joe's is
like 100M+

------
TheUndead96
He should just go self-hosted. If anyone has the resource to make that happen
it is him.

------
sida
It is weird to me that even gimlet podcasts are not exclusive to Spotify.

But JRE will become exclusive

~~~
jccalhoun
they are starting to release them early on spotify and then a few days later
to rss. I think they are also doing "bonus" episodes or something. I think
they are boiling the water and we are the frog

------
wnevets
I'm hoping this peak Rogan

------
olivermarks
Spotify is the Clearchannel/iHeartMedia of the 2020's. I refuse to use.

------
fareesh
Unfortunate to see in the discussion that Americans are so disturbed by one
Alex Jones that there seems to be an eagerness to empower quasi-government
entities to a dystopian, Orwellian degree.

If I wanted to create more Alex Jones characters, this is one way to guarantee
it.

~~~
raptortech
Americans aren't disturbed by Alex Jones. They're disturbed by the number of
Americans who actually believe Alex Jones

~~~
fareesh
Jones is no more ridiculous or dangerous than your average holy book though.

Furthermore his vision of the future is coming true by being sympathetic to
the idea of an all-powerful tech platform.

~~~
carapace
He was bragging the other day about eating his neighbors.

~~~
fareesh
Ezekiel 5:10

~~~
carapace
I don't see the connection. That passage isn't _advocating_ cannibalism, it is
portraying it as a divine punishment.

~~~
fareesh
It's portraying it as a consequence - he was too. If there is no food, he will
have to feed his kids somehow, etc.

"I will be forced to eat my neighbour" versus "Sky fairy warns that people
will eat one another"

The second is more ridiculous, and more people believe it.

------
throwaway122378
Any ideas on how much the deal was for?

------
tobykimmel
So it won’t be on YouTube anymore?

------
boolcow
Joe Rogan is surprisingly greedy. The man has been rich for decades, doesn't
need money at all, and yet he's been selling crappy snakeoil products for
years, and now he's selling out wholesale. He's taking a boatload of money to
kill his show. Maybe he's just tired and this seems like a smart way to end
it...

Sadly he just doesn't seem to be up to the challenge of seizing his role in
history anyway. He could be someone that bridges the left/right political
divide. He's the closest we have right now, but just not up to it.

There is a deep desire in the US for someone _almost_ like Joe Rogan. Just
like there is a deep desire for someone _almost_ like Bernie Sanders. Or even
someone _almost_ like Donald Trump.

I consider these people the first wave of Great Internet Personalities. And
just like the first pancake, they're not quite right.

We're living in a Bizzaro World for now. I'm eagerly looking forward to the
second wave of Great Internet Personalities.

------
general_orr
the video will be on spotify? what does that mean?

------
codecamper
ok. well i certainly won't be use Spotify now to see this thick necked,
horrible tattooed moron douchebag.

Spotify giving him 100M in the middle of a crisis seems particularly tone
deaf.

------
baal80spam
I wonder if SPOT gaining +8.42% today has to do anything with it.

------
ChrisLTD
There's plenty of content and creators exclusive to services and often stuck
behind paywalls. I can't muster any outrage about one more person joining
their ranks.

------
busymom0
I agree with JRE leaving YouTube over the censorship but I disagree with him
moving exclusively to spotify for following reasons:

1\. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban
Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't
like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.

2\. Currently, Spotify doesn't have video (except album cover clips which
occasionally show up). I prefer JRE's video format instead of audio. Think of
Elon smoking weed on video vs on audio - very different. Seems like Spotify
might be adding video later in the year but until that happens, we don't know
what we will be getting.

3\. "Exclusive" deals in the podcast world is bad. Podcasts were supposed to
be platform independent audio files. Making things exclusive is going
backwards.

4\. Spotify is not available in many countries.

5\. Spotify's desktop player isn't the best imo. Their web player is only for
audio so far, so they need to make major changes.

------
troughway
Doesn't JRE have guests on there with cemented right-wing opinions, and in
general controversial figures from which he gains his popularity/notoriety? Is
Spotify going to allow those guests or is JRE going to have to censor?

------
thisisbrians
Really, a typo in the very first sentence?

> Over the past couple of years, Spotify has demonstrating a long-term
> commitment to the podcasting format . . .

I feel like editorial quality has really gone to shit lately, especially at
less mainstream outlets like TechCrunch (where I seem to spot at least one
mistake in every article I read without trying). I wish I could say it didn't
matter, but sloppy writing undermines your credibility, especially with so
many voices competing for attention nowadays. Your [sic] doing it wrong.

------
whalesalad
The comments here are insane. Why do HN readers have this defeatest attitude
about absolutely everything?

One prominent podcaster takes his show to one of the most popular music
streaming services on the planet and the reaction is really "this is the end
of podcasting as we know it" ???

~~~
chipperyman573
I think this is because it can't be listend to anywere but spotify. The
excusivity is what I see many people are taking issue with

------
throwawaysea
Given that Spotify engages in some of the same censorship and control that
other bit tech platforms like Google/YouTube/Twitter practice, I don't see why
I would trust them and invest in their platform as a fan of such content. See
[https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/spotifys-censorship-
crisi...](https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/spotifys-censorship-crisis-is-
about-social-responsibility/) for a past example where Spotify entered the
fray of imposing their own worldviews by censoring content. Yes they
ultimately backed off on that but I can't trust that they'll be the best
steward for free thinking open minded content like Joe Rogan's.

EDIT: see the update at the bottom of the Tech Crunch article.

> Update: In response to a question the Rogan show’s history of controversial
> guests and subject matter, a spokesperson for the company simply responded,
> “All shows on Spotify are subject to our content policies.”

Given their content policies include a vague "hate content" policy
([https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-
prohib...](https://artists.spotify.com/faq/music#what-content-is-prohibited-
on-spotify)), I don't see how Joe Rogan can openly discuss controversial
topics like "Should transgender athletes compete in women's sports" any
longer. Just one more reason to not trust Spotify or other big platform
arbiters.

