The Joe Rogan controversy is what happens when you put podcasts behind a wall

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Spotify didn’t uncover Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan didn’t create Spotify, however their union portends the way forward for a closed podcasting ecosystem. Up till September 2020, The Joe Rogan Expertise was obtainable by way of RSS feeds, YouTube, and podcast gamers. His content material bubbled up now and again, however broadly, Rogan did his present, and the varied distribution platforms let him accomplish that with out having to fret and monitor each episode — if it infringed on a coverage, it might be eliminated, and so it went. That is the world through which Rogan stans and haters can discover frequent floor.

Rogan may have been “deplatformed” within the sense that his episodes be deleted from YouTube or faraway from searches on podcast gamers, however listeners may nonetheless search him out by way of RSS. Everybody would win, theoretically, except you imagine Rogan shouldn’t be revealed anyplace at any time.

Take Infowars creator Alex Jones for instance: Apple Podcasts delisted his present for hate speech, as did numerous different podcast apps, however anybody can nonetheless hear by way of an RSS feed. They’ve to hunt it out — it doesn’t floor on hit charts or in searches and isn’t promoted in-app, nevertheless it advantages from the open podcast system and serves as a counterweight to anybody platform controlling what folks can and can’t hear.

This has at all times been the promise of open RSS: even when one platform doesn’t like your content material, you may nonetheless be heard. Nonetheless, podcasting is transferring away from this world, that means different platforms which are cheering on Spotify’s demise ought to be aware of the way it’s dealing with the scenario. The backlash is coming for them, too, which is why Amazon Music, SiriusXM, and Apple Music piggybacking off the present controversy to promote extra subscriptions struck me as shortsighted. All three corporations have a vested curiosity within the success of particular podcasts, whether or not it’s unique to a platform or a subscription service. Simply because Rogan is the goal right now doesn’t imply certainly one of their exhibits gained’t be tomorrow.

In fact, enterprise will enterprise, and clearly, Amazon will attempt to convert some Neil Younger listeners to its platform. However what occurs if SmartLess or a Wondery present or My Favourite Homicide take a flip for the worst? Amazon, which licenses or owns these exhibits and others, ought to have its technique ready.

We’re transferring away from a world through which a podcast participant capabilities as a search engine and towards one through which they act as creators and publishers of that content material. This implies extra backlash and room for questions like: why are you paying Rogan $100 million to distribute what many think about to be dangerous info? Honest questions!

That is the price of high-profile offers and makes an attempt to broaden podcasting’s income. Each creators and platforms are implicated in no matter content material’s distributed, hosted, and bought, and each must assume clearly about how they’ll deal with inevitable controversy.