As pressure on Spotify and Joe Rogan, the star podcaster, has grown, listeners reported that the company had quietly removed dozens of episodes from his show, while Rogan apologized early Saturday for his use of racist comments in previous episodes.
In an Instagram video, Rogan — whose talk show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is Spotify’s most popular podcast and has been available exclusively there for over a year — spoke about what he called “the most regrettable and embarrassing thing I’ve done.” . something I once had to talk about in public.” A compilation video showed Rogan using the slur multiple times in previous episodes of his show; it had been shared by singer India Arie, who removed her catalog from Spotify in protest at what she called Rogan’s “language around race.”
Rogan said the compilation was based on “12 Years of Talks” on his show, and that it looked “terrible, even to me.” The clips, he said, had been taken out of context, which he said contained discussions of how it had been used by comedians like Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx, who were black, and Lenny Bruce, who was white. Rogan said he hasn’t spoken the slur “in years.”
Posting the clip compilation, Arie said that Rogan “shouldn’t even utter the word. Don’t say it, in any context.” This week, Arie joined a small but influential Spotify boycott led by musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who had cited complaints from health professionals that guests on Rogan’s show had spread misinformation about the coronavirus.
This week, listeners noticed that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” had been quietly removed by Spotify. Neither Rogan nor Spotify have released a statement, and company representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday morning. Commenters on Reddit speculated that some of the missing episodes may have contained the slur, though that was unclear.
A comedian and sports commentator, Rogan started his show in 2009 and built a huge following on YouTube before signing an exclusive licensing deal with Spotify in 2020, for a reported $100 million or more. According to website JRE Missing, which tracks the show, a total of 113 episodes — out of more than 1,700 since the podcast began — have been removed from Spotify since Rogan’s show became an exclusive offering there.
Since Young on January 24 called for his music to be removed from Spotify, the company has come under increasing pressure from musicians and other podcasters about Rogan’s show; the dispute has also spawned musicians’ longstanding complaints about low royalty payments.
Spotify responded by publishing its content policy, saying that Rogan must abide by it. But Daniel Ek, the company’s chief executives, has resisted calls to drop Rogan, as well as counter arguments that Spotify is acting as Rogan’s publisher, saying Spotify is rather a “platform” that has no prior has editorial control over Rogan’s show.