10 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
GOOD QUESTION
How can Spotify regain trust
after its Joe Rogan crisis?As ArTisTs And fAns boycoTT spoTify
over its loyalty to Joe Rogan’s controversial
podcast, the popular streaming service now
finds itself at a crossroads. Should it sup-
port dissatisfied subscribers and moderate
potentially harmful content or keep Rogan
on its platform and chase the most profit
possible? So far, it has tried to do both—and
that’s not going to help regain trust, crisis-
management experts tell TIME.
Spotify’s stance over Rogan has raised
questions about the company’s responsi-
bility to police the content on its platform,
and to take a stance on the podcasts it hosts.
Despite its exclusive deal with Rogan, the
company has tended to avoid labeling itself
as a publisher since it doesn’t have advance
approval of his shows, and can remove epi-
sodes only if they run afoul of its content
guidelines. It has removed about 6% of Ro-
gan’s episodes and added an advisory to any
podcast that discusses the pandemic, but
it is not cutting ties with the wildly popu-
lar host, who has been accused of spreading
false narratives about COVID-19 and con-
demned for his repeated use of a racial slur.
“It shows that they care more about prof-
its than their reputation,” says Steven Fink, a
crisis consultant and author. “That’s never a
good position to be in.”
For Spotify, Rogan’s podcast is a cash
cow: it reaches an estimated 11 millionlisteners per episode, making it the stream-
ing service’s most popular podcast—and
its millennial audience closely aligns with
Spotify’s target customer. But from a social-
consciousness perspective, experts say the
company has mismanaged its crisis response
and should have placed a greater emphasis
on its long-term reputation.
The first thing a company should con-
sider when dealing with a controversy is how
its various stakeholders are reacting—spe-
cifically, its customers, says Jonathan Ber-
nstein, a crisis manager. Choosing between
stakeholders won’t be an easy decision for
a company like Spotify, crisis experts warn,
but executives should let their values guide
the way. “Do they want to be known as a
company that forgives Joe Rogan and sup-
ports anti vaxxers?” Fink asks. “Or do they
want to be known as a company that pro-
tects its customer base?”
According to Eric Pliner, CEO of YSC
Consulting, the most effective leaders are
those who answer questions like these by
looking at the intersection of their morals,
ethical contexts, and job responsibilities.
“You have to realize that there is no way
to make everyone happy,” he says. “In-
stead of trying, and thereby making no
one happy, the alternative is to figure out
what we really stand for and what we won’t
stand for.” —nik popliMIRACULOUS MAKEOVER
An 81-year-old amateur painter
was credited with reviving the
tourist economy of her town in
northeastern Spain in 2012
after her botched restoration of
a centuries-old fresco of Jesus in
a local church went viral.STICKY SITUATION
After staff at Cairo’s Egyptian
Museum dislodged the beard
on King Tutankhamun’s
3,300-year-old funerary
mask in 2014, they stuck
it back on with adhesive,
scratching it in the process.GALLERY GRAFFITI
In 1974, a man in New York’s
Museum of Modern Art spray-
painted “KILL LIES ALL” across
Picasso’s Guernica, in a protest
over the Vietnam War. Escorted
out by guards, he shouted, “Call
the curator. I am an artist.”CULTURE
Art attacks
On his first day at work at a Russian art gallery last
year, a security guard doodled eyes on the faceless
figures in a valuable avant-garde painting, the gallery
said on Feb. 7. He reportedly said he was “depressed”
by the artwork. Though the piece was restored
successfully, Russian police have since opened an
investigation into the incident. Here, more scandalous
vandalism and misguided touch-ups. —Eloise BarryNEWS TICKER
$7 billion in
frozen funds from
Afghanistan’s central
bankkoalas
in eastern Australia
are officially listed
as endangeredsea levels along the
U.S. coast will, on
average, rise by about a
foot by 2050.