Joe Rogan fans are refusing to follow him to Spotify, and it’s bad

With Joe Rogan recently deciding to remove all of his “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast episodes off YouTube, fans have been reluctant to watch the episodes on Spotify.

Since signing a $100 million multi-year exclusive licensing deal with Spotify, Joe Rogan hasn’t had the most comfortable of stays on the platform. He first came into trouble for wrongful claims about the Portland fires, something he was allegedly forced to apologize for.

Moreover, the platform had initially promised no creative control over the content of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. However, that has been seen to not be true, with some of his episodes having been reported missing on Spotify.

This is despite Rogan’s own claims that the platform has said nothing to him about any “editorial oversight.”

Now, Joe Rogan has recently deleted/made private, all of the episodes that were posted on his YouTube channel. This has led to criticism from quite a few fans who have refused to follow him to Spotify.

Joe Rogan fans reluctant to follow podcast episodes on Spotify after YouTube deletion

Of course, the JRE podcast holds the number 1 spot on Spotify by a comprehensive margin. Until a few days ago, most of his episodes were uploaded on YouTube as well. Fans could easily watch the episodes, but that is no longer true.

Now, the recent episode #1572 was posted exclusively on Spotify, with almost 1.8 billion views’ worth of videos having been deleted/made private by Joe Rogan on YouTube. This has been seen by fans as a business decision.

Joe Rogan Experience episodes are being taken off of YouTube. I was in the middle of listening to one when it was taken off 😕

— Ahmed Shariff (@TheAhmedShariff) December 1, 2020

its been a good ride. But thatll be it for me. Youtube Premium is just a much better value than Spotify.

— Show3 (@ShowtimePA3) November 25, 2020

However, it must be remembered that Joe Rogan had first announced back in May 2020 that Spotify will be the exclusive platform on which his podcast episodes will be available for viewers to watch. Regardless, the episodes were also being uploaded on YouTube until a few days ago.

Image via Twitter

Moreover, despite the criticism, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t announced in advance that the episodes will be available only on Spotify.

Image via Twitter

On November 25th, Joe had posted on Twitter telling his fans that his long promised “exclusive move” to Spotify is finally happening, starting from the 1st of December.

Starting December 1st all new JRE episodes will be exclusively on @spotify @spotifypodcasts. Video and audio, all free for everyone. Enjoy! https://t.co/YaqvZALzGI

— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) November 25, 2020

Regardless, the move has come as a shock to most fans who were simply not expecting Joe Rogan to become a Spotify exclusive podcaster.