Joe Rogan reveals major reason YouTube ‘forced’ his huge Spotify switch

Joe Rogan revealed a major reason behind his move from YouTube to Spotify in a conversation with Tulsi Gabard on Episode #1599 of the Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan’s fans still have mixed feelings about his multi-million dollar move to Spotify. However, nobody can blame him for accepting such a lucrative offer. But despite their concerns and accusations, it seems like the reason behind his switch wasn’t all about the money.

In Episode #1599 of the Joe Rogan Experience with Tulsi Gabbard, they eventually started talking about censorship.

It’s an issue that Joe has been concerned about for a very long time, and apparently, it was one of the major reasons why he switched to Spotify in the first place.

“It’s a weird time when someone can just decide that they just don’t like you, or what you’re doing is problematic. It’s one of the reasons why I went to Spotify. It’s because they had a vested interest in me succeeding. 

“Like, instead of worrying about me being pulled from their network. It’s not that I never really worried about that with YouTube. But it’s always possible, and there were some weird shenanigans they would do with demonetizing specific episodes just randomly, and we would question it.”

• Read more: Joe Rogan explains how JRE Podcast became biggest thing

“It’s a way of censoring people without censoring people. Because you say, oh, were you guys talking about that? Oh yeah, you know, we can’t put ads on that. Oh, did you guys swear? Oh yeah, we’re going to have to demonetize that.”

“There was a lot of weird stuff like that. They’re great overall, but the arbitrary decisions are [often] done by people that work there. Someone has the ability to decide whether you make money off something or whether you don’t make money off something.”

• Read more: Joe Rogan and Undertaker explain why CM Punk failed at UFC

“It’s not a primary concern, but it points to an issue, and the issue is someone being able to dictate what you can or can’t talk about, or someone incentivizing you to talk about something or not talk about something. I don’t want to be a part of that.”

The relevant part of the podcast happens between 112:00 and 114:00.

Interestingly, the narrative on social media has been that Spotify has been censoring the podcast. Joe has flat out denied and said they’re a “great company” and “very open-minded.” However, that didn’t stop some fans from begging him to go back to YouTube.

“Go back on Youtube, it’s easier,” one pleaded. “YouTube was more convenient,” another stated. There were also complaints about no comment section.

Sadly for fans wanting to see JRE back on YouTube, there are no signs it will be happening any time soon, especially considering the Spotify deal was for multiple years.