The significant departure of comedian Joe Rogan from the Google-owned streaming service for content creators may signal the beginning of a massive departure from the site amid his strange desire to please the traditional media.
If you know about podcasts, then you know the American comedian Joe Rogan. His show, The Joe Rogan Experience, has been out for over a decade. It all started with simple recordings of how Rogan and other comedians chatted about nothing and smoked jambs before and after performances.
Ten years passed, and Rogan is the host of the most popular talk show, and presidential candidates, Hollywood superstars and billionaires line up to get into his studio. The program has such great influence that its release even affected the value of Tesla's shares after Elon Musk dragged on a jamb during the interview.
Given all this, it is probably not surprising that Spotify managed to entice the former host of the “Fear Factor” program from YouTube by writing him a check, according to rumors, for $ 100 million, which is comparable to good movie fees. For comparison: this is more than that of Dr. Phil, Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Ellen Degeneres and Ryan Seacrest in last year’s Forbes ranking of the five highest paid leaders in the world.
This, apart from the constant full house at his humorous performances, a long contract with Netflix to show recordings of his performances and work as a commentator for the UFC, makes Rogan a breathtakingly rich man, and he only has to talk.
The Joe Rogan Experience has been on YouTube since its inception. The PowerfulJRE channel has more than eight million subscribers, and it receives about 400 million views per month. But, despite such incredible numbers and dizzying success at this site, Rogan decided to leave it. The JRE Clips channel, where it uploads fragments of its releases lasting from five to fifteen minutes, will continue to be updated, but Rogan's flagship project, many hours of broadcasts, will soon be available exclusively on Spotify.
Announcement: the podcast is moving to spotify!
Starting on September 1 the podcast will be available on Spotify as well as all platforms, and then at the end of the year it will move exclusively to Spotify, ... https://t.co/7IRHET5eZo
“Announcement: Podcast Moves to Spotify!” Starting September 1, the podcast will be available on Spotify and other platforms, and by the end of the year it will move exclusively to Spotify, ”Rogan wrote on May 19 on his Twitter.
Partly, his decision to leave the ship (although I’m sure that $ 100 million played a role as well) is due to the censorship on YouTube of his own materials and other people's content. Rogan often complained that the streaming service “demonized” its releases.
Demonetization is when YouTube removes ads from a video posted by the author. Thus, finding this video on the site no longer allows its creator to receive money. Usually, YouTube (which is owned by Google) explains this step by saying that advertisers may be “unhappy” because their products are advertised on some channel, as this is fraught with “problems”.
Last October, Rogan said: “They are eager to control. They want to keep human communication in check. They also want to make a profit. To this end, they also encourage people to make programs that can bring them this profit. If you have a program without foul language, without controversial topics, then such programs are more attractive for advertisers. And they look at people like me from a business perspective and say: “Well, here the prospects for advertising are limited.”
The disease of demonetization seems to hit far more right-wing authors of content. It seems that Rogan fell into this category simply because he invited center-right views to his program of guests - and despite the fact that he interviewed Bernie Sanders and said that he would vote for him if he won the primaries of the Democratic Party, and He was also an ardent supporter of Congressman Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.
Other YouTube stars who claim to have politically motivated censorship seem to be practicing on the site include conservative comedian and talk show host Steven Crowder, British youtuber Karl Benjamin (better known as Sargon Akkadian) and talk show host Dave Rubin. All of them also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Rogan’s departure from the platform should be a wake-up call for YouTube. For him, Rogan is one of the largest and most prominent stars, and his transition to Spotify will probably only start a large-scale outcome with this streaming service. Speaking about three of the mentioned people, most of Crowder’s content is published on Blaze TV, Rubin, in partnership with bestselling author Jordan Peterson, launched his own social network called Thinkspot, and Benjamin announced during yesterday’s streaming that he intends to create his own resource and leave YouTube .
On YouTube, they decided not only to punish the “wrong-thinking” content authors, but also to give preference to the so-called authoritative sources - making the algorithms put mainstream media such as CNN, BBC and Fox News higher than those content authors who made a name for yourself on the site itself.
It seems that in this way Google is trying - for the sake of corporate vanity - to win the favor of traditional media with a liberal bias. However, in doing so, the company caused anger among the authors who created the content on this site and helped the site gain popularity and frustration among viewers, many of whom visit YouTube, especially to escape from mainstream media.
In future years, media history will see Rogan’s transition to Spotify as a momentous moment. While YouTube will continue to cater to the old media giants, a whole galaxy of content authors, evaluating the earning potential, is likely to begin to leave the site. The average age of Fox and CNN audiences is over sixty, while YouTube attracts young people who are looking for something fresh. If YouTube wants to preserve its stellar talents, it needs to stop imposing its viewers on its liberal values that are typical of California and the US West Coast and stay true to its original mission: Broadcast Yourself.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.