Daniel Ek, the chief executive of Spotify, addressed Joe Rogan's past use of racial slurs on Sunday night, telling staff in a memo that while he found the comments"incredibly hurtful" and inconsistent with company values, he did not believe"silencing" the podcaster was the answer.
Ek's comments come as Spotify faces an unprecedented crisis over Rogan's rhetoric on race and Covid-19 that has enveloped the company in controversy and led to a growing number of recording artists and podcasters abandoning the platform.
White and wondering why you can't use the N-word? Watch this 02:26Spotify struck a deal in 2020 with Rogan to exclusively carry his immensely popular podcast on its platform. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal was worth more than $100 million.
Meanwhile, Bill Cosby still on Spotify.
That’s fine. He’s making a choice. So did Neil Young. BTW, have African American music artists fled Spotify after the N-word barrage?
Time to bag Rogan and Goldberg….zucker already bagged. Cancel culture wins again.
~ i’m fascinated by how people’s lives and success can go in such different directions based on the pivotal decisions of others.
🙄🙄🙄 disgrace
Silencing him and choosing to not give him a national platform are two very different things. Face it, you aired him for the money.
Ok, people will simply stop listening to him.
He spoke about racial slurs, like you do now.
Where is the article on Whoopi? Why isn’t she fired? Roseanne was fired, why isn’t Whoopi?
Yes. Keep him on. That’s your right as a private company but don’t be surprised or angry when your stock tanks and artists leave your platform
What a non issue. Not just Joe Rogan, but everybody who’s a target of people who have nothing better to do. Feelings get hurt every day. Get over it. We had to listen to Trump for 4 years.
Time for new leadership at Spotify!
Business is business. Cha-ching! Covid misinformation don’t matter, money rules?
If they want to save the company, fire Ek too. So much for Spotify.
Silencing wasn't required because he co-signed every racist word out of Rogan's mouth!!
Ek has a hundred million reasons to back Rogan
CNN had to settle with Cumo for $9M. 😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Spotify CEO should have been honest and admitted Rogan was too profitable to cancel. I hope more artist leave Spotify. Hate speech and misinformation is not entertainment.
Yes - silence abuse AND - you did by deleting the words but not the person making the noise - so NO - you did nothing but underground abuse. Stop making excuses for profit.
Money is your moral center. Enough said.
WOW! How about carrying this guy on Spotify.
But he was silenced because many of his episodes were removed from Spotify. (all please follow me dkfkl3n)
Well lose money easy