Recording artists like Neil Young and others have pulled their music from Spotify's streaming subscription service in protest over what they believe is misinformation regarding COVID-19 being discussed by guests on Rogan's podcast. Joe Rogan's exclusive podcast on Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) has been getting a lot of attention lately, and not necessarily for good reasons.

Write him at, tweet him at, or subscribe to his Substack. He is the author of Technology’s Big Bang: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Moore’s Law, available at the Amazon Kindle store. ĭana Blankenhorn has been a financial and technology journalist since 1978.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the Publishing Guidelines. On the date of publication, Dana Blankenhorn held long positions in AMZN, GOOGL and AAPL. Investors, and the company, look to be on their own. But the European Commission would be unlikely to permit Spotify’s acquisition by foreign interests. Normally, a sale to one of these companies, or to a content company such as Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) or Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) might seem an obvious solution. The company, based in Europe, is competing directly with three American Cloud Czars, trying to navigate among content creators, their agents or publishers, and a fickle market. The assumption is that losses can be narrowed whenever the company wants at minimal risk.īut the mess also shows the risk in Spotify’s business model. Paying three times revenue for a company growing at 25% per year is cheap for tech investors. It highlights how cheap the stock had become. The Rogan mess hit when SPOT stock was vulnerable. They offered special deals to people switching services and playlists featuring Young. Young also joined other artists in complaining about poor music reproduction on Spotify.Īpple and Amazon lost no time piling on. The efforts at damage control drew criticism from other Spotify podcasters, even the White House, which said “there is more that can be done” against disinformation. The difference is that Spotify owns the content it’s not moderating. This is an argument used by Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: FB) to defend propagandists using the service to attack democracy. While Rogan and the service apologized, and Spotify created a “content policy,” it admits no legal responsibility to moderate podcast content. The problem with podcasting is an ethical one. Its second quarter 2021 market share was estimated by Midia Research at 31%, in a market of 523.9 million listeners. The company also offers a free, ad-supported music service.ĭespite competing directly with Cloud Czars Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) YouTube Music, its focus on music and podcast strategy mean Spotify has been more than holding its own. The podcasts bring in listeners who are also buying Spotify’s premium music service, which costs $10-16/month. Spotify is buying podcast content rather than licensing it. That speaks to the success of Spotify’s podcasting efforts. It had $2.1 billion in cash and short-term investments as of September. Spotify had operating cash flow of nearly $300 million in 2020. The “whisper number,” a hoped-for loss, was 30 cents.ĭespite it beating both profit numbers, investors sold the stock. A loss of 44 cents/share for the December was expected. The loss for fiscal 2020 (which ended in September) came to $662 million, $3.53/share. Like many tech companies, Spotify has long sought growth at the expense of earnings. It had to defend the podcaster to protect its business model.

Media reports suggested Spotify was “choosing” between musicians like Neil Young, who pulled their music off the service, and Rogan. The controversy involved Rogan feeding his audience anti-vaccination propaganda.

Spotify stock drops joe rogan