MSM try to claim Spotify lost $2bn from Rogan protest

Mainstream media outlets today tried to claim that Spotify’s stock plummeted 25% due to protests against Joe Rogan, resulting in a $2 billion loss for the platform. 

Spotify had pulled musician Neil Young’s music from its platform after Young issued an ultimatum that Spotify could have “[Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.” In his ultimatum letter, Young had complained that Spotify allows Joe Rogan, host of the world’s biggest podcast, to spread what Young considers to be “COVID-19 misinformation” when Rogan hosted top medical experts who challenged the running COVID narrative.  

These medical experts included Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most published cardiologists in history, and Dr. Robert Malone, who is one of the architects of the mRNA vaccine technology which powers the COVID vaccine. Malone also owns nine patents on the technology. 

In alliance with Young, other notable artists such as Joni Mitchell pulled their content from Spotify as well to protest Rogan’s “COVID-19 misinformation”. 

Media publications then tried to claim that the company’s stock fell as a result. 

“Spotify Lost More Than $2 Billion in Market Value After Neil Young Pulled His Music Over Joe Rogan’s Podcast,” reported Variety. 

“Spotify Loses $2 Billion as Stock Plummets After Neil Young’s Joe Rogan Protest,” reads a headline from The Wrap. 

The articles do admit that Spotify’s stock was plummeting even before the Young saga, but the outlets nonetheless published headlines to suggest that the two events are linked. 

This move was not received well by many social media users. 

“The market in general was way down this week, but in the last two days of trading, since they announced Young was gone and Rogan is staying, their stock is actually up slightly,” tweeted John Ziegler. “You moronic hacks have no shame!” 

“You mean Spotify stock is down, kinda like the entire NASDAQ is down 20% in the same time frame?” wrote another user. “Is that Rogan’s fault as well? Critical thinking fail. But then again you weren’t really thinking at all, were you?”   

Another tweet read, ““The whole market was down this past week. Did Tesla’s stock also dip because a misguided old man pulled his music from Spotify?” 

Spotify has since pledged to add a content advisory to any COVID-19-related content on its platform which will urge listeners to consult with their physicians. Rogan himself recorded a video that he posted to his Instagram account, in which he responds to the controversy which centered around his interviews with McCullough and Malone. 

“I had them on and because of that, those episodes in particular, those episodes were labeled as being dangerous, they had dangerous misinformation in them,” Rogan said in the video. “The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact, like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, ‘if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID,’ you’d be removed from social media, they would they would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact.  

“If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media,” Rogan continued. “Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you’d be banned from many social media platforms – now that’s on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories that at one point in time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast that had been accused of dangerous misinformation.”