Spotify Continues to Remove Episodes of Joe Rogan’s Podcast ⇥ digitalmusicnews.com

Paul Resnikoff, Digital Media News:

Just last week, Digital Music News first reported that 40 different Joe Rogan Experience podcast episodes were found missing from Spotify, now the exclusive platform for the show. Now, that number has quickly grown to 42, with potentially more shows quietly getting removed from the catalog.

Among the newly-missing is an episode (#411) with Bulletproof Coffee founder Dave Asprey, a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience. Strangely, Spotify has deleted three total episodes with Asprey for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

You may remember Asprey from his many years of bullshit.

It is worth reading this article alongside something like Ben Thompson’s piece about sovereign writers, and considering the balance of editorial control and independence against guaranteed income.

I am not a fan of Rogan’s podcast; I think it sounds like if you grafted a mouth onto a lifted Dodge Ram covered in Punisher decals. I also think that it is probably a good thing for the world that Spotify can exercise some control over a popular but obsequious host. But I have to wonder how comfortable Rogan is with sharing his fame with Spotify while letting it meddle with his show. Spotify surely benefits from the exclusivity of his show and being associated with one of the world’s most popular podcasts; Rogan benefits because he is a hundred million dollars richer, which is a galling amount of money for Joe Rogan’s HGH and PCP power hour. Spotify apparently has little editorial control, but it now has control and responsibility over distributing an exclusive show that it paid, again, a hundred million dollars for. Rogan’s name may be on the show, but it is Spotify’s reputation that is on the line.