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Comment by jamesgreenleaf | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone expect a different outcome? Rogan supposedly pulls in 200M monthly listeners while Young's spotify page says he gets 6M per month.

I imagine Young's manager/label tried their best to talk him down, if this wasn't a stunt for some other purpose.

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Neil Young has fuck you money and is standing on his principles. Nothing his manager could say would dissuade him. He has very little to lose here.

Joe Rogan has fuck you money also. Dave Chappelle walked away from a big project because of creative differences. Joe Rogan could do the same if he were forced to.

JRE will roll on regardless of what Spotify does. Neil Young will always be Neil Young.

The only people hurting here are the decision makers of Spotify.

He lets himself be edited by Spotify (removal of a bunch of episodes) - maybe he doesn't have as much fuck you money as you think.

I don't know the degree of editing that Spotify does. If they are only removing episodes, that's different from constraining Joe Rogan in his creative direction.

Note: I may have been wrong about the reasons for Dave Chapelle leaving. If I'm recalling correctly, that was the reason he originally cited when leaving. But more info came out in later interviews. Seems like he just needed a break from the spotlight.

You can have both 'fuck you money' and a contract simultaneously.

Okay? The point is that Neil Young will be no worse off after this.

They both have fuck you money. One difference is that Joe Rogan is 54 and makes most of his money from producing new content. Neil Young is 76 and makes most of his money from the music that he has already made. Rogan needs Spotify for his future income. Young, much less so.

Joe Rogan would still be pulling in millions without the Podcast: MMA commentary, stand up comedy tours, and whatever residuals he has. If Spotify let him go, he would just be back on Youtube tomorrow, with arguably a larger audience than he has on spotify, because youtube is free.

> If Spotify let him go, he would just be back on Youtube tomorrow

Sure. But without the remainder of the $100 million that Spotify are paying him. Could he monetise a YouTube channel to that amount over the same time period? Perhaps, but Spotify are currently handling his marketing for him, so I'm sceptical.

I wasn't criticising Rogan, simply pointing out that the situation is different for him and Young - due to their differing ages and the nature of their creative output.

Yeah, I think we can agree that staying on Spotify is likely the most lucrative option for him, but my point is that greed notwithstanding, he's probably got enough money that he would be fine to never earn another cent. Either way, IMO this whole thing is so crazy overblown.

It would only take 34 more artists to have the same demand to make dropping Rogan worth it, which seems doable. I'm glad someone got the ball rolling; Hopefully others take it to the finish line.

Doesn't work like this. Rogan pulls in people for Podcasts. Otherwise even Spotify users are going to go elsewhere for their podcasts (PocketCast, OverCast, Apple, etc..). 34 artists likely aren't going to be deal breakers for most of the customers. Most will just not listen to those 34 artists rather than leave Spotify.

I'll immediately leave Spotify too as a user if Spotify bends to the will of Neil Young (and I'm a NY fan as well).

I imagine there's more listeners like me, and I assume there's no listeners out there that will suddenly start listening to Spotify if they aren't already.

Maybe not. I can't imagine Spotify wanting to set any precedent in this area. Who's to say it would stop with JRE and not end with all of their content creators fighting to platform each other. There is a lot of potential for objections across a broad swath of art.

Depends on the artist...T. Swift vs. Rogan would be a pretty close thing.

Rogan listeners listen for hours on end, how long to Neil Young listeners listen for? You can't compare them 1 to 1. Rogan is better for metrics.

Artists are some of the most Free Speech people out there. Going to be a hard sell.

> Rogan supposedly pulls in 200M monthly listeners while Young's spotify page says he gets 6M per month.

Somewhat pedantic note: this statement seems misleading to me. I think you mean "200M monthly listens", unless you're claiming that 2.5% of the world's population listens to Rogan every month?

According to this Neilsen chart [1] JRE is most watched media at 11 million viewers per show, far ahead of even the number two spot.

JRE does 3-4 shows on a typical week. So:

3.5 / 7 * 30 * 11 = 165m

So the other 35m per month must be groups of people viewing? Not sure how they took measurements or if this is apples to oranges comparison or if the graph is to be trusted [2].

[1] https://i.redd.it/or4mhemo8j981.jpg

[2] https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/joe-rogan-viewers.html

Good point. Spotify uses the term "monthly listeners" and it seems like they do mean unique individuals. That number is 6M for Young, but they don't reveal what it is for Rogan. He's claimed that he gets 200M monthly downloads, so the number of actual listeners is probably smaller.

Why would the two numbers differ significantly?

Because 1 person can listen to multiple episodes per month, contributing to multiple "listens"

Seems reasonable. Apparently it’s around 11 million per episode.

They had little choice. If you let someone anyone dictate your decisions, others will leverage their power too. Soon, it would descend into who has more clout than whom and the parties shoot at each other in a cross-fire as they race to the bottom. It would be a no-win for Spotify.

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