Spotify will not allow any inaccurate content on its podcasting platform, the streaming service’s chief content & advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff said Tuesday at Coins2Day’s Most Powerful Women Summit.
“There are definitely, you know, very aggressive moves on our part to invest in not only the R&D side of content moderation but also in our teams for trust and safety,” said Ostroff. “And we continue to invest a significant amount of money there, because it’s important for everybody.”
The streaming service has recently faced pushback from some employees over its partnership with Joe Rogan, with whom it signed a $100 million deal last year to exclusively license his video and audio podcast.
Rogan has made controversial and misleading comments about the COVID pandemic and vaccines. In April, the podcast host recommended healthy 21-year-olds not get the COVID vaccine—a statement he later walked back. The host has also praised some COVID conspiracy theories by far-right radio host Alex Jones and most recently said he believes Joe Biden did not get a real booster shot on live television.
The partnership with Joe Rogan is part of Spotify’s recent emphasis on podcasts, in which Ostroff has been instrumental. Besides Joe Rogan, the company also has exclusive deals with Barack and Michelle Obama and Kim Kardashian and is creating its own content.
In early 2019, Spotify had about 185,000 podcasts on its platform, Ostroff said Tuesday the company now hosts more than three million. Spotify has taken a fragmented business and introduced unified metrics and the foundational aspects of other digital business, said Ostroff.
Although the company has placed a big emphasis on podcasting in the past few years, its biggest competitor in the space is Apple, the world’s biggest tech company.
Yet, Ostroff said Apple taking the podcasting space more seriously is a positive thing, overall.
“The fact that Apple and other competitors are now in the space in a more committed way I think speaks volumes to the potential, and it elevates the entire medium which is very positive thing for all of us,” she said.
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