The number of premium subscribers to the music streaming service Spotify increased by 15 percent year-on-year.
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Despite the Joe Rogan podcast scandal, Spotify subscribers are on the rise.
©Spotify
The scandal surrounding podcaster Joe Rogan does not appear to have had a negative impact on the number of subscribers to the music streaming service Spotify. Despite fierce controversy earlier in the year, Premium subscribers grew from 180 to 182 million in the first quarter of 2022. This corresponds to an increase of 15 percent. There is also an increase in monthly active users. The number rose year-on-year from 406 to 422 million.
Russia withdrawal means quarterly target missed
Spotify only slightly missed its target of 183 million premium subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. According to the streaming service, this is due to the withdrawal from the Russian market.
“Excluding the impact of our exit from Russia, subscriber growth was above expectations,”
like Spotify.
Podcaster Joe Rogan scandal
At the beginning of 2022, Joe Rogan, who has been running his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” for 13 years and offers it on Spotify, came under criticism with racist and unqualified statements about the corona pandemic. Musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell then removed their music from the platform. At the time, Spotify demonstratively backed Rogan and reaped a violent headwind. Under the hashtag “SpotifyDeleted” users called for a boycott of the service. A little later, Spotify finally gave in and deleted several episodes of the podcast from the Spotify library. The scandal didn’t hurt Rogan either. In one of his recent episodes, the podcaster even admitted that the headlines brought him numerous new subscribers.
