Spotify Losing Tons Of Customers, But Not Because Of Joe Rogan?
Spotify has announced that they have lost a ton of subscribers as of late, but that has nothing to do with the recent Joe Rogan controversy.
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Spotify seems to be going through quite a bit of controversy as of late. The initial issues came with Joe Rogan and the guests he had on his podcast. Rogan is certainly the main attraction on the streaming service, but a mere few weeks ago a group of scientists and doctors banded together to attempt to get his show taken down due to the controversial guest doctors that he had on. These doctors were allegedly stating misinformation about the pandemic, which infuriated a ton of people. That was the start of the controversy that led to Spotify getting into deep water with its user base. Now the streaming service has announced that they have lost 1.5 million paying subscribers in 2022, but they claim that it’s due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and not of Rogan’s controversy.
While it would make sense that Joe Rogan and the controversy behind his guests on his podcast would make plenty of Spotify listeners tune out, the streaming service has halted all premium services in Russia, which will cost them around 1.5 million premium subscribers. Even when the CFO for Spotify, Paul Vogel, was questioned as to whether Rogan was the cause of losing so many subscribers, he had this to say, “Going through a little bit of controversy, there’s always going to be some impact.” A little bit of controversy is referring to the hot water that Spotify got into when Rogan was blasted for bringing on controversial figures to his podcast. While the public outcry was to have his show removed altogether, Spotify did not budge. They added warnings to the beginning of any show that had to deal with the pandemic in nature. Rogan was also in a ton of trouble after a supercut video was made of him using the n-word. He has since apologized for that. However, even though all that transpired, Vogel claims that Rogan had nothing to do with the dropping of subscribers.
Spotify is also joining most of the world in canceling services or limiting Russia in an attempt to stop the nation from benefiting from any sort of technology that could help further their attempted takeover of Ukraine. The streaming service is said to have removed its offices from Russia and stopped the RT and Sputnik news services from the streaming service. However, they are not going to be removing the service entirely. Spotify has also announced that this loss of 1.5 million subscribers is less than one percent of their revenue. There are tons of companies placing sanctions on Russia in an attempt to deter them from furthering their invasion of Ukraine. So while most people can easily point the finger at Joe Rogan and claim that his controversial happenings in the last month are the cause of Spotify’s numbers dropping, they are actually doing their part in supporting Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, and the conflict is currently ongoing. There is no telling when Vladimir Putin will attempt to stop this invasion, but it appears as if many companies are attempting to do their part to prevent an even more catastrophic war. Spotify has joined in on limiting the potential benefit that Russia would get from using their streaming service.
