“Content moderation might be their first.” ■įor more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. Software firms’ valuations “have long been driven by the notion that there’s no marginal cost”, says Mr Page. Spotify says it has 8 million creators, but the company continues to single out and champion Rogan, a major name in podcasting who it signed to a licensing deal last May. It will probably involve lots of human moderators automating the process with artificial intelligence, as Facebook and others are doing, is even harder for audio than it is for text, images or video. As audio platforms host more user-generated content, the moderation task will expand. “It’s a massive blind-spot.” It could also prove to be a pricey one. “It’s always been baffling to me how podcasts have flown under the content-moderation radar,” says Evelyn Douek of Harvard Law School. (Insiders suggest the answer is not many.) How many work for the audio streamers? None will say. Facebook employs 15,000 content moderators. Amid Rogangate, Spotify revealed it had deleted 20,000 podcast episodes over covid misinformation. Amazon seems to have published even less by way of rules for audio content.Īnd whereas most social networks publish regular reports on what content they remove, the audio platforms are mute on the subject. Apple has content guidelines for podcasts, but for music only a style guide that asks artists to flag explicit lyrics and to keep album artwork clean. Spotify, a 16-year-old company, published its “platform rules” only after the Rogan controversy erupted. A big difference is that their oversight of what is uploaded seems primitive by comparison. Services like Spotify thus increasingly resemble social networks like YouTube. Unlike “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which is professionally produced and owned by Spotify, most of the tens of thousands of new podcasts and songs uploaded to the platforms every day are user-generated. Nonetheless, the Rogan affair touches on a sensitive subject for all streamers. Apple and Amazon wasted no time in promoting the pair on their social-media feeds. Mr Young and Ms Mitchell are no longer A-list stars, but their departure undermines Spotify’s claim to offer “all the music you’ll ever need”. Its main rivals, Apple and Amazon, have market values some 70 and 40 times its own $37bn, respectively, and bundle audio along with TV, gaming and more. On February 2nd it warned of slowing subscriber growth, sending its share price tumbling. A group of 270 scientists, professors, doctors and healthcare workers wrote an open letter to Spotify recently expressing concern about. A rough calculation by Will Page, a former Spotify chief economist, based on figures from MRC, a data firm, suggests the musician stands to lose about $300,000 this year if he continues his boycott (though it seems that, for now, streaming of his songs is up by about 50%, owing to more plays on other platforms amid publicity from the spat). Mr Young says he gets about 60% of his streaming income there. The advisory is set to be implemented globally "in the coming days.As the biggest streamer, with 180m paid subscribers, Spotify has power over artists. The new Spotify advisory for podcasts will direct listeners to its "COVID-19 Hub" - a resource that "provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources," CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a statement. The group said Rogan and Malone made claims on the show that have been discredited. Rogan said he wanted to hear the two experts' opinions and claimed that "many of the things we considered misinformation just a short while ago are now considered as fact."Ī group of health experts wrote a letter to Spotify earlier this month, calling on the platform to remove Rogan after his "highly controversial episode" with Malone. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who has become a hero in the anti-vaccine community and has been banned from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. He defended his choice of having two controversial doctors on the show – one of which was Dr.
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