Research company Forrester Research has found that Spotify has lost 19% of its subscribers over the past week because of the Neil Young / Joe Rogan controversy and is bound to lose more after Rogan’s racist podcasts were discovered and removed.
Young was dropped by Spotify after giving the company the ultimatum to stream his music or Joe Rogan’s podcasts but they couldn’t have both. Spotify chose Joe.
Young’s problem with Rogan was his lies about vaccines. The anti-vaxxer podcaster led the charge of vaccine conspiracy theories, regularly having antivaxxer guests on his show with no balanced view for the other side.
Spotify had 180 million paying subscribers earning the company revenues of over $2 billion a month. A 19% downturn in subscribers will take off $380 million a month or $4.560 billion a year in revenues from the streaming company.
Despite the huge earnings the company has never posted a profit. In 2020 Spotify posted a $665 million loss.
Spotify paid $100 million for the Rogan podcasts which are listened to by 11 million people an episode.
This week, Rogan was outed even further for his racist podcasts. Spotify removed 70 podcasts because of Rogan’s regular use of the N word. He also had a racist discussion with another guest stating there was no such thing as a “black” person except for naked natives in the tribes of Africa.
R&B star India.Arie quickly removed her music from the streaming service following these new Rogan revelations. Other artists including Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, David Crosby, Stephen Still and Graham Nash have also exited the service.
Spotify was down a further 1.67% in trading overnight to $171.51 a share. The share price is down 23.57% for the month and 29.76% for the year or $72.65 per share. The company has lost around $10 billion in value so far in 2022.
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