Poll: Did you change your Spotify subscription as a result of Joe Rogan story?
Spotify Joe Rogan story shows up 4th in best today on HN. I wonder how the HN crow actually votes with their money on it.
UPDATE: I specifically did not include any option, representing what one “would” or “might” do. Intentions, especially in surveys, almost useless, imo. Also, if subscription status change for unrelated reason, I would bucket into either “I was subscribed before and still am now.” or “I was not subscribed before and neither am now.” because in this case your subscription status did not change because of this story.
7 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] threadI am also blocked by the fact that, while I do dislike Rogan and his fans, and think worse of Spotify for having brought him on etc, I don't think this is that big of a deal overall. They have a lot of podcasts and they have a lot of music, and a lot of the content is likely objectionable to various people. I don't agree with free speech radicals/ideologues who sometimes imply standing up for him is fighting some kind of good fight, that anyone should be allowed to say anything and that deplatforming people with views that are, e.g., bigoted somehow stifles intellectual progress. Huge amounts of victim mentality among such people, I find, just like among the woke crowd.
For me, just as a practical matter, I don't know how Spotify could keep making distinctions between what is acceptable and content and not. Apparently, they are removing episodes of his which spread outright misinformation in the domain of Covid (leaving up the other 9, 484, 333 episodes of his that contain misinformation in other areas of life). From a business standpoint, it's a slippery slope for them, and I don't think cancelling my Spotify sub over Rogan alone makes much sense. I get their dilemma and have some sympathy as someone aspiring to entrepreneurship myself.
But this means I support Spotify here only insofar as it makes business sense for them based on the revenue they think he generates[0], and only insofar as they are like "well, we have this contract, and breaching it for PR reasons wouldn't send a good message to other artists and companies with whom we have relationships"--stuff like that. Business reasons. Those are valid reasons to keep Rogan on, and reasons I can accept. Ideological reasons having to do with "free speech" and propping up this stand-up comedian as a valid source of information? Totally opposed to my worldview and would be more likely to ditch Spotify the more they apply.
0. I wonder how they even measure that--how can they know if anyone would cancel Spotify but-for him? Is that how they think about it? How good are they at detecting when a user is going to churn, what do they look at?
But now I won't. If forced I'll find something else to listen to, though I hope my dues via Patreon will delay that for some time.