Spotify paid Joe Rogan over $200m despite LGBTQ employees’ concerns about inflammatory content: report

Spotify may have paid Joe Rogan $200m to exclusively distribute his popular podcast, more than twice the original rumoured amount, according to The New York Times.

The company has declined to comment publicly on the terms of the deal, originally thought to be worth $100m. However, according to two insiders who spoke anonymously with the Times, it’s actually worth over $200m over three-and-a-half years.

Mr Rogan, whose Joe Rogan Experience podcast can draw tens of millions of listeners to popular episodes, was the crown jewel of the streaming service’s ambitions to become a top podcasting platform.

Spotify has also gone on a buying spree of podcast-related apps and media companies in recent years, including buying audio-savvy media outlets like Gimlet Media and The Ringer.

The company, whose stock jumped 17 per cent when the Rogan deal was announced, now sees podcasts as a major way to compete with big tech companies like Apple and Google, as well as fellow streamers like Netflix.

There are now over 3.5 million podcasts on Spotify, which made up more than 12 per cent of the company’s revenue from ad-supported content in 2021.

In recent months, however, Spotify’s big bet on Joe Rogan has started to become a complicated matter for the Swedish company.

Guests spreading Covid misinformation, as well as Mr Rogan’s own comments doubting the necessity for vaccinating young adults, inspired outrage from scientists, condemnation from Spotify partners like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as well as boycotts from top artists like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young earlier this year.

The scandal resulted in Spotify publishing its content guidelines for the first time, as well as attaching a disclaimer to Covid-related content with links to scientifically validated information.

But the issues didn’t stop there. The scrutiny led to the unearthing of numerous past episodes where Mr Rogan used racial slurs and made crude jokes about gender and sexuality, prompting the comedian and MMA commentator to publicly apologise and request a number of past episodes to be taken down.

Spotify has also promised to spend $100m on content from creators from historically marginalised backgrounds.

Internally, Spotify’s LGTBQ+ employees had previously expressed their concerns about Mr Rogan’s inflammatory content being featured on the platform, but thus far the company has stuck by their star.