I find it hard to believe this is a net gain to Spotify in the long run. It may well have been legal, but Rogan signed on as exclusive to Spotify with the understanding that they would be a platform for him and allow him to further extend his brand and reach his followers. Spotify is still in the early stages of their plan to curate and improve advertising in the podcast space, and their plan is to sign exclusives, forcing listeners onto their platform where the free tier can now have targeted ads as opposed to traditional podcasting with traditional media style ads.

Now anyone who receives an offer like this from Spotify will have to consider the possibility of having their brand censored. This will either drive up the cost to Spotify or simply make content providers refuse all together. So, unless Spotify has decided to quit this business plan, I don’t think this is a good long-term solution.

I do think what happened is Spotify saw its DAUs and subscribers dipping, and after the bloodbath in $FB stock last week, got freaked out and abandoned a long-term business plan to prevent a dip in users this quarter.

Its called "compelled speech".

I don’t think anyone here is arguing they should be forced to keep these episodes up. I just think that they should voluntarily want to do so, and that it’s bad we have a cultural climate where letting people hear contrarian political views is a financial risk in the first place.

I’m not sure what you’d call that. But standing up to an angry mob is called “spine”— something Spotify seems to lack. The only JR podcast I listened to was the Bernie Sanders one; I have no dog in this fight. But I do dislike it when a bunch of angry folks silence someone. I saw it all the time as a kid when Newt and the evangelical right were in power. Today, the same abhorrent behavior is coming from the other side of the aisle. It’s all the same to me; moralizing do-gooders who can’t just leave other folks alone.