Hitting Pause on Spotify
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You probably know Spotify as a streaming music juggernaut, but its business model has grown far beyond just music. Last year, the company paid a reported $100 million dollars for exclusive distribution rights to the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. But now Rogan's penchant for interviewing controversial guests, some of whom propagate disinformation about Covid vaccines and climate science, has riled up Spotify users and artists alike. Prominent musicians like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and India Arie said they would pull their music from the streaming service unless Spotify dumped Rogan.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs joins us to talk about the big Spotify dust-up. We also offer some advice about how to manage your streaming music library across platforms … just in case you might want to take your playlists to another service.
Show Notes:
Read Kate’s story about the Spotify and Joe Rogan saga. Read Adam Speight’s story about how to move your Spotify playlists to Apple Music. Reece Rogers has advice about getting started on YouTube Music.
Recommendations:
Kate Knibbs recommends the novel The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. (Read her review of it here.) Mike recommends the sci-fi show The Expanse. Lauren recommends an REI Nalgene water bottle with a small mouth.
Kate can be found on Twitter @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Mike. Lauren. Mike, if you had to give up Spotify right now, could you do it? Well, I mean, for how long? For like an hour? Forever. Forever. Forever and ever and ever. I mean, I would survive, but I think my enjoyment of life might go down maybe one notch. What about you? I mean, I'm not saying you give up music. |
| 0:22.2 | Just Spotify. |
| 0:22.9 | Yeah, I know. |
| 0:23.8 | I understood the question. |
| 0:24.5 | All right. |
| 0:29.8 | I think I have thought about Spotify in the greater context of things this week. And yet, every time I get in my car or I go for a run, I open Spotify. |
| 0:35.3 | It's there. |
| 0:36.0 | It's just there. |
| 0:36.9 | Well, let's talk about this. |
| 0:45.0 | Hey, everyone, welcome to Gadget Lab. |
| 0:46.8 | I'm Lauren Good. |
| 0:47.6 | I'm a senior writer at Wired. |
| 0:49.5 | And I am Michael Colori. |
| 0:50.8 | I'm a senior editor at Wired. |
| 0:52.2 | It's great to have you back, Mike. |
| 0:53.3 | Oh, well, thank you. |
| 0:54.4 | We're also joined this week by Wired senior writer Kate Nibbs, who is zooming in from Chicago. |
| 1:00.4 | Kate, it's great to have you back on the show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be back. |
| 1:04.7 | If you listen to any podcasts other than this one, you've probably heard about the recent controversy involving Spotify |
| 1:11.9 | and the podcaster Joe Rogan. So to quickly recap, Spotify, which is primarily all about streaming |
| 1:18.8 | music, has been pushing deeper into podcasting in recent years. And then last year, it paid a reported |
| 1:24.8 | $100 million for exclusive access to the podcast, the Joe Rogan |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WIRED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of WIRED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.