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NEW YORK (AP) — Spotify’s common US podcaster Joe Rogan apologized Saturday after a video compilation surfaced that confirmed him utilizing a racial slur in clips of episodes over a 12-year span.
The mea culpa got here after Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter India.Arie posted the compilation on Instagram and introduced that she was eradicating her music from Spotify’s streaming service due to it.
Spotify is going through rising discontent from artists over Rogan’s podcast, which it reportedly paid greater than $100 million to license. Final month, musician Neil Younger eliminated his music over considerations that Rogan was magnifying vaccine skepticism.
In a video posted on his Instagram account, Rogan, who hosts a podcast known as “The Joe Rogan Expertise,” mentioned his use of the N-word within the compilation Arie posted was the “most regretful and shameful factor that I’ve ever needed to speak about publicly.” However he mentioned the clips had been “taken out of context.”
“It’s not my phrase to make use of. I’m effectively conscious of that now, however for years I used it in that method,” he mentioned throughout the six-minute video on his Instagram account. “I by no means used it to be racist as a result of I’m not racist.”
He didn’t specify which years he used the racial slur.
After eradicating her music from @Spotify, @indiaarie has doubled down on her determination alongside clips of @joerogan utilizing racist language: “They take this cash from music streaming and pay this man $100million and pay us .003% of a penny [per stream]? Simply take me off!”
TW: n-word pic.twitter.com/wvzqh4OnB0
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) February 3, 2022
Rogan additionally addressed a clip from his podcast 11 years in the past through which he talked about going to a movie show in a Black neighborhood to see “Planet of the Apes.”
“I used to be making an attempt to make the story entertaining, and I mentioned we acquired out and it was like we had been in Africa. It’s like we had been in ‘Planet of the Apes,’” Rogan mentioned. He mentioned he wasn’t making an attempt to be racist however realized it was “an idiotic factor” to say. He mentioned he deleted the podcast however that somebody will need to have saved the clip.
In her video, Arie mentioned even when a few of Rogan’s conversations had been taken out of context, “he shouldn’t be uttering the phrase.”
“Don’t even say it beneath any context,” she added.
Rogan’s apology comes as Spotify is promising to fight the unfold of COVID-19 misinformation as a part of a damage-control marketing campaign sparked by Younger.
Final Sunday, Spotify mentioned it’ll quickly add a warning earlier than all podcasts that debate COVID-19, directing listeners to factual, up-to-date info from scientists and public well being consultants. The corporate additionally goals to bolster transparency about its publishing choices by laying out the principles it makes use of to guard customers’ security.
Spotify garnered 31% of the 524 million worldwide music stream subscriptions within the second quarter of 2021, greater than double that of second-place Apple Music, in keeping with Midia Analysis. Spotify isn’t all the time common with musicians, lots of whom complain that it doesn’t pay them sufficient for his or her work.
Arie mentioned in her video that Spotify is constructed on the again of the music streaming enterprise and that it makes use of that cash to reward Rogan in a profitable deal. She mentioned she doesn’t need to generate cash that pays for the podcaster.
“Simply take me off,” she mentioned.
Spotify didn’t reply instantly to a request for remark.
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