Rogan's use of racial slurs adds to pressure on Spotify

Joe Rogan's mouth has put Spotify in a tough spot. Anti-coronavirus vaccine comments and racial slurs on some episodes of his popular podcast are forcing the streaming service to weigh difficult choices.

Spotify must decide where it stands on race relations and vaccine misinformation in a society with heightened sensitivity to both issues. Then there's the business decision about what to do with Rogan's $100 million podcast, which threatens the bottom line but is also a key part of the company's strategy to be a one-stop shop for audio.

Neither the streaming service nor Rogan was talking Sunday. But experts say Spotify's management team has to choose whether to sever ties with Rogan as it risks more musicians yanking their work in protest. Or is there some middle ground that might be acceptable to artists and subscribers?

Whatever decision emerges won't sit well with one side or the other in an increasingly polarized country.

On race, the choice is between keeping Rogan and sending a message that society has become too “woke” or showing that Spotify is more attuned to a multiracial society, said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

“If Spotify says ‘We can’t drop him. He has the right to say what he wants,' that continues on the line where there is this implicit support to say racist things on these platforms,” she said.

The streaming site also has to decide whether offensive words are allowable elsewhere on its app, where songs with racist, homophobic and anti-immigrant messages are available, said John Wihbey, a Northeastern University professor and specialist in emerging technologies.

“There's some real self-examination to be doing beyond Joe,” Wihbey said. “This is a big moment of reckoning for entertainment and...