Telling to see Joe Rogan beaten back by the pushback against him, first from Neil Young, then Joni Mitchell and then a roster of artists on Spotify none too happy with Rogan's schtick about the pandemic. And rightly so many would argue.

It was entertaining, though informative, to see how initially Spotify played safe. After all Rogan was a serious hire for them in terms of profile and popularity.

Earlier on Sunday, the chief executive of Spotify, Daniel Ek, released an official statement setting out the streaming platform's plan to tackle misinformation, as more users publicly unsubscribed from the service, more musicians withdrew their music and the company lost billions of dollars in market value.

But then as the Young et al snowball gathered speed and more members a penny dropped somewhere. Perhaps aided by the news that Spotify's value had just taken a hit. And this with just a few artists pulling their music. As Variety noted:

Spotify's market capitalization fell about $2.1 billion over a three-day span this week, coming after folk rocker Neil Young yanked his songs from the audio-streaming giant to protest Joe Rogan's misinformation-spreading podcast.

Shares of Spotify fell 6% from Jan. 26-28. Over the same time period, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 1.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%. For the sake of comparison, Netflix's stock recovered a bit, up 4.9% over the last three days, after getting hammered following its Jan. 20 earnings report.

Spotify stock closed Thursday (Jan. 27) at a 19-month low of $171.32/share.

 

And suddenly there's chats and statements and explanations and so on...