“This Is Straight Up Censorship”: Joe Rogan Debuts On Spotify With Dozens Of “Controversial” Episodes Missing
Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/02/2020 – 10:15
The world’s most popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, made waves earlier this year when it was announced that Rogan would be moving exclusively to Spotify.
Rogan finally made his debut on the platform this week, but much to the surprise of some listeners, his entire library of episodes didn’t make the trip to Spotify with him.
In fact, dozens of his past episodes with “controversial guests” like Alex Jones, David Seaman, Owen Benjamin, Stefan Molyneux, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Charles C. Johnson, and Sargon of Akkad did not make the migration over to Spotify, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Spotify also left off an episode with Joey Diaz where the comedian joked about “coercing female comics into performing oral sex” – a joke that resurfaced in recent months amidst some controversy.
The news will likely come as a surprise to some Rogan fans, as the show prides itself on being unedited and uncensored. It’s also surprising because when Rogan signed his deal with Spotify, he told his listeners that “beginning Sept. 1, the entire JRE library will be available on Spotify.”
Rogan said of the deal in the past: “They want me to just continue doing it the way I’m doing it right now. It’s just a licensing deal, so Spotify won’t have any creative control over the show. It will be the exact same show. We’re going to be working with the same crew doing the exact same show.”
Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million for exclusivity to the podcast. It launched on the platform on Tuesday of this week with a marathon 5 hour episode with frequent guest Duncan Trussel.
The question then turns to whether or not the censorship was Spotify’s decision, or Rogan’s. The daughter of frequent JRE guest Jordan Peterson weighed in on Twitter:
Okay. Getting demonetized from @youtube is one thing. At least they didn’t shut down my channel. However this is COMPLETELY different.
@spotify is NOT uploading select @joerogan episodes including my episode. pic.twitter.com/r4HCPhr35j— Mikhaila Peterson (@MikhailaAleksis) September 1, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“This is straight up censorship. This is absolutely ridiculous. My episode with Joe is #1164. It is NOT on Spotify, along with some other episodes,” she said in a subsequent Tweet.
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