Text | Music Herald (ID: nakedmusic), author | In the summer, edit | Fan Zhihui, Titanium Media is authorized to publish
Recently, Spotify has been mired in ongoing controversy sparked by its exclusive podcast show Joe Rogan Experience and shareholder skepticism from falling stock prices.
On Jan. 24, Neil Young, in protest of Joe Rogan's misleading message about the COVID-19 vaccine spread on his podcast", called out to Spotify on his personal website, asking him to choose between removing Joe Rogan's show and removing his own music.
Unfortunately, Spotify eventually chose to keep Joe Rogan's show, a practice that triggered a chain reaction, with joni Mitchell, Graham Nash and other musicians publicly withdrawing from Spotify. At the same time, competitors such as Apple Music took advantage of the launch of the Neil Young feature on the homepage to win people's hearts, and Spotify's stock price also fell.
In fact, Spotify has been trying to be neutral on the matter, saying in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: "We want Spotify users to have access to all the music and audio content in the world, and of course, it is also a huge responsibility to balance listener safety and creator freedom", "We regret Neil Young's decision to remove his music from Spotify, but we always welcome him back." ”
However, in many cases, not choosing A will be considered as choosing B, and Spotify's controversial choice has led many netizens to publicly resist it on social media.
For music platforms, it seems helpless to be boycotted because of public issues rather than their own business capabilities. However, as a public platform that gathers a large number of users, the music platform is already facing not only the competition in products and services such as the amount of music library, singers, and prices, but also the position on public issues such as health, human rights, and equality is also an important consideration for users when choosing a music platform.
Do you want a podcast or music?
The expansion of the podcast controversy stemmed from a now-deleted open letter that Neil Young posted on his personal website.
He noted in the open letter that "most of the audience that hears untrue, misleading and false information about the COVID-19 vaccine on Spotify is 24 years old, vulnerable, and prone to the wrong side." These young people believe that Spotify will never provide information that is completely untrue, and unfortunately, they are wrong. I know, I have to try to point that out. ”
At the same time, "Spotify has a responsibility to reduce the misinformation that is spread on its platform, although the company does not currently have a policy on the handling of misinformation." Neil Young pointed out that "Spotify has become the birthplace of life-threatening COVID misinformation" and called on "other artists and record labels to leave the Spotify platform."
In fact, as early as Jan. 13, 270 healthcare professionals wrote a joint letter asking Spotify to manage the misleading information in joe Rogan's podcast and prevent it from spreading further. But Spotify didn't respond to that at the time.
Why didn't you respond in the first place? This has to do with the platform's content strategy.
Back in May 2020, Spotify won the exclusive rights to the podcast Joe Rogan Experience for $100 million. According to the data, "Joe Rogan Experience" brings an average of 11 million listeners to Spotify per episode, and Spotify's recent standout in the podcast field is largely due to exclusive head anchors like Joe Rogan.
Either given Joe Rogan's strong appeal in spotify podcasting, or to maintain its own governance rules, Spotify chose the former between Joe Rogan and Neil Young.
Spotify's controversial approach to the incident gave competitors a chance.
On Jan. 27, satellite broadcasting platform SiriusXM moved swiftly to reboot Neil Young Radio, on the day that SiriusXM shares rose more than 3 percent and Spotify shares fell about 1.2 percent. Apple Music then sent users a message feed about TheIl Young music playlist and called itself "Home of Neil Young," while both Apple Music and Tidal highlighted TheIl Young-related playlists on their homepages.
Meanwhile, a large number of netizens on social media joined #ByeByeSpotify# to share screenshots of their cancellation of Spotify accounts.
Competitors' string of solidarity with Neil Young on social media has undoubtedly garnered a lot of people who participated in #ByeByeSpotify on social media.
As things get more and more unfavorable, on January 30, Spotify founder Daniel Ek publicly stated, "We have an important responsibility between supporting creator expression and user safety, and will be releasing long-term platform rules for audio content and adding disclaimers to all podcasts discussing COVID-19." ”