Joe Rogan’s podcast is becoming a Spotify exclusive | Hacker News Reader

Joe Rogan’s podcast is becoming a Spotify exclusive

theverge.com

58 pointsxoxoy58 comments

> Listeners won’t have to pay to access the episodes, but they will have to become Spotify users. Spotify said in a press release that Rogan retains creative control over his show. It didn’t disclose how much it spent on the deal. The company will also work with an ad agency to jointly sell ads against the program. Rogan said last year his show reached about 190 million downloads a month.

What an unfortunate ending to JRE for me. A show that used to be sponsored by flesh-light and filmed in Joe's living room is now a celebrity talk show hosted in a walled garden.

Huge props to Joe and Young Jamie for growing it into this behemoth but sucks to see them turn their back on free publishing/consuming model of podcasting.

I hate this, too.

I mean everyone has a price but I’m so disappointed. I’m not going to subscribe to Spotify for this podcast. He couldn’t just up the advertising his podcasts charge? This is super lame.

>>> Listeners won’t have to pay to access the episodes

> I’m not going to subscribe to Spotify for this podcast.

You can still listen to it free.

And give them my data: hahah fat chance.

While most people whine: How long before he would potentially get canceled on YT anyway? YT is a terrible place for content creators, and almost all people I watch complain about it, but can't really do much about it since it's a monopoly. I for one am happy to see some diversification and competition in the space.

My knee-jerk was that this was awful, but I agree, I think there is some leeway.

Google as the provider of all content is not playing out too well. Along with twitter they are becoming more and more aggressive in pushing their political agenda into the content they allow.

I don't think most people would have a problem if he simply switched YT for Spotify. It's the exclusive part (ie. no more RSS based mp3 feeds, as in, the "podcast" part of the show) that people complain about.

> podcast

If it's exclusive to Spotify, it's not a podcast anymore. That's fine, but it's just not a podcast, it's a show on Spotify.

Is it still a TV show if it's excusive to a particular streaming service or TV channel?

Spotify is terrible for podcasts. It clearly is a music player first and podcast player second - someone thought since both are just audio streams why not do both?

What would make it better for podcasts? Just curious, I use it for podcasts and have no major complaints. Any alternatives you suggest?

Spotify taking shows that used to be published in RSS and making them exclusives is bad for the really nice ecosystem of podcasts and podcast players that run on RSS, using just simple directories so users can add feeds by search and not only URLs. This is great for privacy (no creepy trackers, podcasts hosts only get your IP address from the download request) and for the fact that it’s not ruled by a central authority (like YouTube or Facebook) meaning creators aren’t subjected to arbitrary and sudden rule changes that may seriously damage their income. This recent article has a great explanation on this issue: https://stratechery.com/2020/dithering-and-the-open-web/ My favorite podcast player is Overcast (iOS). I’ve also heard that Castro is good too. Hope you try one of these open players, there are many incredible podcasts that aren’t on spotify.

I listen to a few infosec podcasts when I'm out and about, and Spotify frequently forgets how far into an episode I am, or it just randomly jumps back half an hour. Only when I realise things sounds oddly familiar do I notice it happened yet again.

>It clearly is a music player first

Well thank you Sir/Lady for this nice joke, made my day. I stopped using Spotify because I couldnt' handle their player anymore. Back to my Foobar2000/MPD.

I mostly blame YouTube for the move... Anyone that doesn't seem to be towing the line of the major network/content sources seems to be losing a lot of advertising, and it's not really surprising to see this.

I'm running an android tv and watched his shows, or at least clips pretty regularly. I'm actually surprised there aren't bitchute and other video options for Android TV (not sure about firetv or apple). Youtube is the 600# gorilla and needs to be brought back down to size.

I don't blame creators for exploring other options... not everyone can get a fat check from spotify... I also wonder if this will still have video?

Despite already being a customer, I find this disheartening.

In my mind, this is the real headline: Spotify paid millions to harm our right to choose where we consume content.

Music services have so far avoided the library fragmentation and exclusivity wars that soured streaming video. You can generally get all music on all services. Spotify was big enough to keep Apple Music from getting too hostile in this space, but they've lived long enough to become the villain.

> Music services have so far avoided the library fragmentation and exclusivity wars that soured streaming video.

Libraries were fragmented in music years ago but it eventually didn't work out for either the artist (Radiohead with Spotify) or the service (Tidal). We're just now seeing it with podcasts.

This makes me incredibly sad: not that we are losing Rogan's show, but that Adtech is finally absorbing the last type of media that was truly Free.

I also think this is a bad move, but to play devil's advocate for a moment.. if this deal had meant that the show became ad-free (it's not), would that be preferable to it being open but with ads?

I only ask because I think some people here might say yes, though I personally think the importance of being open and using open protocols like RSS supersedes the business model.

I don't care about ads, I care about walled gardens. Especially walled gardens that are designed to spy on you.

That being the case, which is worse, youtube or spotify in this case?

its a podcast. It just also is published on youtube. Listen to it via RSS on a podcast app and thats my choice.

> The JRE will debut on Spotify on September 1, 2020, and become exclusively available on the platform later this year.

The RSS podcast part will also be gone later in the year. I don't really listen to Joe Rogan's show, but I feel this is a very bad move for a "podcast" and am very said that a very prominent show decides to do this..

That's like choosing between the plague and cholera. I'm not really a personal fan of Sam Harris but I have to say I approve of his way of running his podcast. Charge people some money and send them an RSS link.

Open with ads is better than add free but walled for me as well.

But it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, they could have put ad-free version on (paid) Spotify, ad version everywhere else.

It was already adtech, just youtube's ad-tech. And YouTube has been a really bad actor in terms of creator support.

Spotify becoming the Epic-Games-Store-esque antagonist of audio?

FWIW, you can share a Spotify family with 5 other people. You don’t need to be a family. Just to tell Spotify that you do live at the same address. You don’t even have to know each other, and can live in different countries.

You can also use a vpn (turkey is a good location but there are others) and tada every plan is now a fraction of what it costs in your actual locale. And it’s like Netflix, the country you use it in defines the content you have access to, not the country you’re subscribed in.

I ditched Spotify a long time ago, their player is garbage imo, music quality is subpar, and they’re missing a lot of what I listen to. But I’d you’re going to cave and give them your money reluctantly because you can’t live without this podcast then this somewhat makes you feel you’re still sticking it to the man.

I was going to add my mother-in-law to our Spotify account and Spotify wanted her to be at the address provided on the account. I didn't follow through because I assumed (didn't try) that they would do some sort of GeoIP lookup. She's close (8 miles) but Comcast instead of CenturyLink so definitely different IP range.

No she just has to enter the same postal address when asked. That’s it. Geoip wouldn’t work I think because what if you’re traveling or on a vpn etc

Just goes to show you how important content is. In this case it's even more important than features and code for me.

This Saturday I'm going to sit down and spend half an hour: 1. Cancelling Apple Music 2. Installing Spotify 3. Signing up for Spotify 4. Resubscribing to not just this podcast, but the other 10 I have subscribed to.

I've stayed on Apple Music for _years_ because I was just too lazy to switch. There's no way I'll pay for both Apple Music and Spotify though.

Great move Spotify. I have to applaude this even though you're adding an extra errand to my day.

I've avoided Spotify for all these years because it always felt like it was part of the Facebook / Apple universe, which I generally find annoying. But I love Joe so I thought in preparation for this move, I'll go ahead and sign up, not wanting to be a sourpuss about it. Sure enough, I could sign up with Facebook, or with Apple (but not Google etc), or the old-fashioned way with email and password. I filled out the nosy little signup form and the next step was to install an app on my computer! No chance.

You can choose to not download the app, and just access it through https://open.spotify.com

I pay for premium Spotify so maybe its a little different but you don't need to install an app, you can access their content via https://open.spotify.com/

OK, thanks, good to know. That's not where it dropped me after signing up though—it put me on an app download page and it didn't look to be optional.

Out of curiosity, what is the Facebook / Apple universe? Not sure I see the connection there exactly.

Perhaps a sign of things to come, podcasts, like RSS and feeds will eventually just be something you'll find exclusive on a dominant web platform. Sucks.

I wish this stupid podcast would die already. It's a podcast in which misinformation is spread at a massive scale, under the guise of "I'm just asking questions". The initial quirky, fun nature of this podcast died out a few years ago, and it has been coasting on its past success for the recent past. I wonder who will be the next Joe Rogan?

Whenever I overhear JRE on a subject I know anything about, I'm reminded of Gell-Mann Amnesia:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

Absolutely. I both think the "fake news" meme is toxic and yet, at the same time, know that EVERY news article for which I've had personal knowledge of the events that actually took place... the article got it substantially wrong, sometimes inventing whole facts out of thin air.

So it sounds like you will still be able to watch full episodes on video on Spotify as well?

This is blogspam from Vox media.

Link to actual announcement: https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/1262812859983151104?s=20

So the Spotify earnings/share in 1Q'20 are -$0.22. They're spending $100 mil on this deal. Does this make any business sense? I can hear echoes of AOL/Time Warner.

January: WWIII

February: Australia on fire

March: World Pandemic/ Global economic collapse

April: Murder hornets

May: Joe sells out

Whew. Fuck 2020.

WWW III in January? Did I miss it?

Yes. With Iran.

How many people died?

Only the people who died in the Ukrainian plane crash that the military accidentally blew up.

This is one of the crazy things to me. The U.S attacked a foreign country. Then, that country fearing it was being attacked launched a missile at something it thought was a threat. The U.S. caused Iran to take a defensive posture and be fearful of flying objects. How is the U.S. not directly responsible for that downed plane?

I can play...

The U.S. has an adversarial relationship with China... China was afraid of being embarrassed because of the US... How is the US not directly responsible for COVID?

That's the thread of a great question we should be asking ourselves. "How has the behavior of the U.S. effected the global response to COVID?" I feel like your question only furthers my point that aggressive and confrontational foreign policy has a multitude of unintended consequences.

My point is, there's a limit blame-shifting. Eventually the blame falls on those acting, not on those that influenced them or their ancestors. Eventually you'd get to something like, given the first man was obviously doing something bad for the first woman, how can it not be the woman-kind's fault?

"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws

The idea that Rogan hadn’t long sold out is a bit of a stretch.

To who? Butcherbox? Traeger Grills? The motherfucking Cash app building wells for the pgymies in the congo?

Joe's always been sponsored by small companies who make things he likes. He even still talks about Bellator and OneFC fights and boxing despite working for the UFC. He about as independent as he can be. I doubt Spotify have any creative input to the show.

So how has Joe sold out before, or now?

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239304

although this thread is older and that second one is linking to "tech crotches" of the web

That sucks.

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