Joe Rogan has alleged that several U.S. presidents attempted to have his podcast taken off Spotify during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 58-year-old podcaster said presidents tried to have The Joe Rogan Experience taken down over claims that it spread “vaccine misinformation.”
Here are the details on Joe Rogan’s Spotify dispute during the COVID debate
On the June 17 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan spoke with behavior expert Chase Hughes about the Spotify dispute. “They tried to crush my sponsors. They organized campaigns. There were PACs (political action committees) involved,” he said, as quoted by Dexerto.
He further narrated, as per The Wrap, “I can’t even talk about it, but there were presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify.” “Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. Yeah. And it turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single [person] apologized.” Adding, “It was nuts, but it didn’t work. But they tried. They spent a lot of money, a lot of money.”
Rogan praised Spotify, which is based in Sweden, for resisting the pressure campaign, saying, “Thank God I was on Spotify. And thank God Spotify is not an American company.” Rogan said it helped that his podcast was number one in around 90 countries, rather than ranking low, adding that the global popularity made a difference.
Spotify reportedly paid $100 million for the rights to The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020, with the podcast said to have been downloaded nearly 200 million times a month, as per the BBC.
Rogan did not name the former U.S. presidents involved, but claimed “they spent a lot of money, a lot of money” trying to undermine him. However, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were the two presidents in office for most of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to The New York Post, in 2022, Spotify came under fire from critics who accused Rogan of spreading COVID-19 misinformation on his podcast. Musician Neil Young removed his music from Spotify in protest, saying he did not want to share a platform with the podcaster. He told Spotify, as stated by the BBC, “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” In January 2022, Rogan apologized, reports The Guardian, saying “I don’t always get it right,” and added that he would work to “balance things out” by featuring “experts with differing opinions.”
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Originally reported by Meenakshi Sengupta for Reality Tea
