Is Spotify shadowbanning Joe Rogan Experience? Algorithm not suggesting it to new users

Spotify has long been in music streaming but the company still has a lot of technical glitches to address. One thing that’s likely a feature and not a bug was the recently unearthed analysis of how Spotify recommends podcast content.

Excellent research from Bumper unveiled details behind the intricate episode suggestion system Spotify uses – and found out that Spotify is less likely to suggest Joe Rogan Experience to new listeners.

Rogan became a household name when he signed an exclusive deal to stream episodes of JRE on Spotify. The deal was initially rumored to be around $100 million but was later confirmed to be over $200 million dollars worth.

Like many Streaming companies, Spotify shows bias when it comes to suggestions. It is more likely to recommend you shows that they produce or are exclusive to them – roughly 14% of suggestions are from their own unique catalogue.

Joe Rogan has been quoted saying in the past that infamy had actually had positive results on his numbers with episodes averaging around 11 million downloads. He’s also the most listened to podcast in over 90 countries.

While the algorithm they use would suggest episodes of podcasts where Rogan was a guest – it would not push The Joe Rogan Experience.

Spotify dealt with quite a bit of controversy resulting from attempts to cancel Rogan. At first, Rogan was under attack for featuring Covid skeptics in back to back episodes early this year.

That round of controversy didn’t last long and was quickly replaced by racism accusations stemming from a compilation of Rogan uttering the N word over 20 times during the decade he’s podcasted. While the use of the word is often a quote or a lyric a number of podcast episodes have been pulled due to this.

But besides the censorship it’s quite likely that Rogan retains ownership over his podcast and has just licensed Spotify to be his exclusive platform – meaning that at the time the deal expires he’s likely free to go another way which could be a potential reason why Spotify wouldn’t try to steer their ‘new’ users toward this content.

As per Bumper :

” I couldn’t find any evidence that Spotify is displaying episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience in their “You might also like” sections.

Perhaps Spotify has decided against using their recommendation algorithm to actively promote Joe Rogan. Or perhaps his show’s gravity is so strong he doesn’t need support from a recommendation engine.”