Another week, another Rogan-Spotify headache
Comedians enjoying controversy and being the center of attention? Really? Context Collapse #121
Today in Context Collapse: Spotify-Rogan kayfabe, another giant gaming acquisition and more…
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In news that we could all see happening from 1000 miles away, Joe Rogan’s causing PR headaches for Spotify.
I don’t need to recap all the details of Rogan’s podcast guests spouting off on some…. not great vaccine skepticism… because it’s been well, well, well covered elsewhere.
But here are a couple of isolated data points we’re gonna aggregate. Use them as you will.
Spotify paid Joe Rogan ludicrous amounts of money to make his extremely popular podcast, including its past episodes, content that’s exclusive to Spotify.
As a host, Rogan’s had many, many controversial guests—and that before Spotify inked their deal with him. It also seems Spotify demanded some episodes not appear on their platform.
On his show, Rogan the host is a gifted conversationalist who can keep on-air conversations with guests flowing for more than two hours—a rare skill. However, he is also noticably uncomfortable pushing against his guests or calling them out on-air. (Two traits that, of course, are intertwined!)
Several well-known musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell told Spotify essentially that “it’s him or us,” and Spotify chose the massively popular with younger listeners podcaster over the legacy artists responsible for a relatively smaller number of streams. The loss of Mitchell and Young is no great shakes for Spotify’s catalog, but causes a massive PR headache with possible government ramifications downstream.
If Spotify were to end their business relationship with Rogan and remove his podcast… that’d be a massive win for Rogan. Spotify paying financial penalties to Rogan *and* his podcast becoming available to listeners on Apple, Pocket Casts, YouTube… ironically enough, Rogan’s Spotify deal restricted his distribution.
There’s almost definitely a metric shitton of behind the scenes discussions between Rogan’s team and Spotify at this moment. All the public facing stuff, the righteous Tweets? All smoke and mirrors. I’ll pay attention to the quiet changes that happen in who shows up as a guest in the show or the statements pushed out by PR at 6pm on a Friday night.
Anyway, I’ll leave the last word to writer Eugene Robinson, who has some thoughts:
But the reality of it is, his use of words and the power they carry can only have their way with an audience of the willing. The words and the thought structures they represent, while having very real world consequences (see above under: “hemmed up”), if you’re not character flawed? Are maybe just...”comedy”? That is: laughing at, and not with.
Which is why his tax return, his big, giant, multi-page tax return probably lists his occupation as Comedian.
But this is not really comedy, without the quotes, nor is it uncomfortable with hiding behind the fact that it is, or might be. No. This is #richguystuff.
In other words if he liked golf more he’d probably be out doing that. But he doesn’t, so he doesn’t.
Instead he holds forth on a panoply of things that amuse him, the well-heeled, and amuse him even more when he watches the monkeys spin over the newest and neatest farty noise pronouncement he’s made.
Race? Sure. Drugs? Sure. “Cancel culture”? Double sure.
So you ever wonder how a comedian gets his kicks? Just like this it seems. And it’s all fun and games. Right up until someone hasn’t figured out what’s “funny” and what’s not.
…Yup.
Other Things:
Why famous heavy metal bands are making money by selling branded whiskey.
Lyz Lenz on Casey’s and gas station fast food as cultural identity.
Sony is buying Bungie, makers of the super-popular Halo, for $3.6 billion. Go and tell me again that video games don’t matter. I dare you.
My husband works in IT and is on the leadership team at a midsized private company. He was part of a panel that recently interviewed a number of folks for an open position on his team. They are entirely remote. They had a few candidates for a first and second round, and had one make it to a third final round before an offer. “John” accepted the offer and started last week!
Except … it’s not the John my husband remembers. My husband was confused and said the following things were odd:
– John has different hair and now wears glasses.
– John is talking extensively about working in a garage because his three children and wife are home. In the interview, he made references to being single and was visibly in an indoor desk area.
– John can’t answer a number of questions that they previously discussed in the interview, things pretty pivotal to the position.
– Husband describes John as being aloof and pretty timid whereas John was confident and articulate when they interviewed him.
He is convinced this is not the person they hired. I agreed that all those things taken together make this very odd but each one could have a valid explanation. I told him the most likely explanation is the hiring committee simply mixed up the candidates (or HR did) and the wrong John was offered and accepted. He agreed but said since only one candidate made it to the third round, that is really unlikely (other candidates had already been sent rejections before the third round even occurred). He’s confident they couldn’t have been mixed up.