Established around 15 years ago, today Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service provider, with over 381 million monthly active users.
Spotify follows a freemium model with the most basic services provided free and premium subscribers get to enjoy commercial free and offline listening amongst many other benefits.
Spotify users can search for their favourite album, artist or genre and can even create and share playlists that match their mood or theme.
Musicians and content creators such as podcast hosts receive income from Spotify based on the number of artist streams as a proportion of total songs streamed.
Most Popular Podcast
In september 2020 it is reported that Spotify paid around $100 million to have exclusive access to distribute and stream The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts in the world.
Joe Rogan is a US stand-up comedian and TV host who launched his podcast in 2009 and features a wide range of guests such as actors, musicians, comedians, and even politicians. In 2019 the Joe Rogan podcast was downloaded 190 million times per month.
Spotify recently came under intense pressure after alleged continuous Covid misinformation was presented by its top performing content creator, Joe Rogan.
In response to this the famous musician Neil Young immediately informed Spotify to remove all his music from the platform as he believed the platform was facilitating Covid misinformation.
Responding to Misinformation
Spotify appeared to be totally fine with this proposal and followed suit by removing all of Neil Young’s songs from the platform with a message to the artist indicating that they would like to see him rejoin the platform as soon as possible.
Young’s departure from the platform was soon followed by another iconic musician Joni Mitchell. “irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” the Canadian singer said in an official release.
Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have been friends for many years and they have both survived polio.
In response to the growing dissatisfaction from Spotify users around the world the Company in a statement said: “We have detailed content policies in place and have removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since 2019.”
Platform Rules
One of the founders of Spotify mentioned that at the same time as supporting the expression of content creators that it would not take on the stance of being a content censor in addition to having many rules in place alongside consequences for those that break the rules.
As part of this response Spotify announced that it would be publishing its long-standing Platform Rules that was developed by an internal team in collaboration with outside experts and the company also expects to update these regularly on an ongoing basis.
In addition Spotify will also be adding a content advisory to any podcast episode or content that includes a discussion on Covid and directions to the Spotify COVID-19 Information Hub where users can access resources that provide access to data-driven facts, current updated information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world.
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Spotify will also begin testing systems designed to highlight its Platform Rules so creators and content creators and publishers will better understand what’s acceptable on the platform. According to Spotify Co-Founder Daniel Ek, “That doesn’t mean that we always get it right, but we are committed to learning, growing and evolving.”
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