Spotify Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan has announced that Spotify has added more ways for his fans to watch his podcast. The streaming service has added the ability to play Joe Rogan Experience episodes on their TVs from the Spotify app and multiple devices.
Rogan said on Instagram on April 13, 2021, “@spotify has expanded the way you have watch the podcast on TVs. More to come!” Rogan’s Instagram post says, “Video episodes of JRE are available on the Spotify app on: Apple TV, Airply, AndroidTV, FireTV and Chromecast.” Rogan said LG Smart TV will be available in a week and Xbox, Roku, Xfinity, Samsung Smart TV and more are coming soon.
Rogan signed an exclusive deal in 2020 with Spotify. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal is worth more than $100 million. Rogan said during a February 2021 podcast that Spotify was working on additional ways for his fans to stream the video portion of the show. Before the Spotify deal, Rogan would post full episodes on YouTube, along with podcast providers.
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Many Rogan Fans Reacted Positively to the News, While Others Continued to Beg Rogan to Return to YouTube
Rogan received several positive reactions to his announcement on Instagram from his fans. Ash Dykes responded with simply, “🔥🔥.” Another fan wrote, “PlayStation please then we good ! This is a good start tho.” Another wrote, “Haven’t watched since its moved to spotify. Maybe will when it comes to xbox.” And another fan said, “F***** finally!”
Others posted comments asking Rogan to return to YouTube. One wrote, “We don’t care just go back to YouTube.” Another said, “YouTube seems like a good place to post.” And a third fan wrote on Instagram, “YouTube Joe. People watch stuff on YouTube.”
Rogan also received some criticism on his post about the fact Spotify removed more than 40 episodes from the JRE podcast library when it moved his content on to its platform. Rogan has said on his show that as part of the deal, Spotify said there were some episodes it did not want to host, and Rogan said he was fine with that. Rogan has said Spotify has not interfered with who he can have on the show as a guest and doesn’t care about what he talks about.
One fan wrote, “Expanded the way you watch, censored the content you can watch.” Another wrote, “Cool! So JRE can be censored on other platforms?” Another commenter said, “What about the ‘controversial’ ones Spotify deleted?”
Rogan Said Spotify Initially Tried to Make the JRE an Audio-Only Podcast
During a February podcast episode with comedian Fahim Anwar, Rogan talked about how Spotify was working to expand the way fans could watch the show. “It’s eventually going to be on all platforms, in terms of television based platforms. They’re working on a bunch of different platforms,” Rogan said.”But it’s not as smooth as it probably should have been when they first transferred over in December, but they just weren’t ready for the volume. They created video because of the conversation we had about this podcast.”
Rogan told Anwar that when he was first talking to Spotify, the company wanted him to create an audio-only podcast. Rogan said, “My manager was like, ‘Think about the Elon Musk moment when Elon Musk was smoking weed.’ That was a viral moment that only happens with video. Spotify was like, ‘You’re right’ and then they started working on the video platform.”
He also addressed the censorship claims, telling Anwar, “There’s a few episodes they didn’t want on their platform that I was like ‘OK, I don’t care.’ But other than that, terms of what I do in the future, the big test was having Alex Jones on. A lot of people were like ‘They’re telling Joe Rogan what he can do and what he can’t do’ and I was like, ‘They’re not. They’re not. And let’s show you.’ Alex Jones and Tim Dillon was like one of my favorite podcasts I’ve done.” The episode with Jones and Dillon came after Rogan had moved to Spotify.