Spotify Adds ‘Content Advisory’ to Material Relating to COVID-19, Joe Rogan Responds to Controversy

If you’re a fan of rock or metal music, you obviously know about the controversy surrounding streaming service Spotify. But in case you don’t know, here’s the tasty shit:

• A bunch of doctors sent Spotify a letter being like, “Podcaster Joe Rogan and his COVID and vaccine misinformation is basically screwing us in the war on COVID.”
• Singer-songwriter Neil Young pulled all his music from Spotify rather than share the platform with Rogan.
• This prompted Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta to blast Young on Twitter, which got him chewed out by former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach.
• Spotify pulled Young’s music, because they just paid Joe Rogan more money than God for his DMT ramblings.
• Disturbed frontman David Draiman commended Spotify, which also go Baz on his case.
• Folk singer Joni Mitchell also pulled her music in solidarity with Young.
• Spotify’s market value dropped $4 billion, and their investors are a little edgy about all this controversy.

Which leads us to today, when Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has announced that the streaming service will make their Platform Rules public in the name of transparency, and will also add a ‘Content Advisory’ to any content with possible COVID-19 misinformation.

Here’s Ek’s full statement below, with certain sections bolded for importance’s sake:

“A decade ago, we created Spotify to enable the work of creators around the world to be heard and enjoyed by listeners around the world. To our very core, we believe that listening is everything. Pick almost any issue and you will find people and opinions on either side of it. Personally, there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly. We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.

You’ve had a lot of questions over the last few days about our platform policies and the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. We have had rules in place for many years but admittedly, we haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly. This, in turn, led to questions around their application to serious issues including COVID-19.

Based on the feedback over the last several weeks, it’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely-accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time. These issues are incredibly complex. We’ve heard you – especially those from the medical and scientific communities – and are taking the following steps:

Today we are publishing our long-standing Platform Rules. These policies were developed by our internal team in concert with a number of outside experts and are updated regularly to reflect the changing safety landscape. These are rules of the road to guide all of our creators—from those we work with exclusively to those whose work is shared across multiple platforms. You can now find them on our newsroom, and they’ll live permanently on the main Spotify website. They are being localized into various languages to help our users understand how Spotify assesses all content on our platform.

We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19. This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources. This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days. To

We will also begin testing ways to highlight our Platform Rules in our creator and publisher tools to raise awareness around what’s acceptable and help creators understand their accountability for the content they post on our platform. This is in addition to the terms that creators and publishers agree to governing their use of our services.

I want you to know that from the very first days of the pandemic, Spotify has been biased toward action. We launched a variety of educational resources and campaigns to raise awareness and we developed and promoted a global COVID-19 Information Hub. We donated ad inventory to various organizations for vaccine awareness, funds to the World Health Organization and COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) to increase vaccine equity and supported the Go Give One fundraising campaign. And we established a music relief project to support the creative community. While this is not a complete list, I hope it gives you a sense of how seriously we’ve approached the pandemic as a company.

I trust our policies, the research and expertise that inform their development, and our aspiration to apply them in a way that allows for broad debate and discussion, within the lines. We take this seriously and will continue to partner with experts and invest heavily in our platform functionality and product capabilities for the benefit of creators and listeners alike. That doesn’t mean that we always get it right, but we are committed to learning, growing and evolving.

Daniel

You can find Spotify’s platform rules here. While they’re pretty standard, there are some that definitely make us arch an eyebrow, such as:

• A ban on “content that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act of any kind“ — So, would songs about how great drugs are be banned? Is Cypress Hill’s “Hits From The Bong” banned in certain states?
• Banning content featuring someone “posing as another person, brand, or organization in a misleading manner” — Would comedy content and impersonations be banned? We think they’re pretty obviously not “misleading,” but remember that a lot of people are real fucking stupid.
• A ban on “promoting or glorifying hate groups and their associated images, and/or symbols” — You Just know some asshole out there has a dossier at the ready explaining how Black Lives Matter is a hate group.

Of course, Joe Rogan had something to say about this, which you can watch below. Long story short, he plays up how his show is just asking questions and how there are “probably a lot of things going behind the scenes,” implying some bigger conspiracy theories. He also totally approves of the ‘Content Advisory,’ so have at it, Spotify.

Check it out:

[Via Consequence of Sound]