Is This The End Of An Era For Joe Rogan?

There’s a good reason Joe Rogan’s interviews rose to prominence; in a landscape dominated by simpering suck-ups like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Ellen DeGeneres, Rogan’s down-to-earth approach was a breath of fresh air.

Or rather, a breath of pungent smoke. 

Sure, late night hosts have generated plenty of viral moments during their safe, sterile interviews - usually scripted pranks, fictional anecdotes, or celebrities awkwardly playing to the crowd. And to be fair, who could possibly relax in front of a live audience? Even entertainers need to wind down, in order to really open up. 

The Joe Rogan Experience provided intimate encounters, laced with intoxicants, just to spice things up. Even better, Rogan doesn’t seem to care about manufactured Twitter controversies - his guests are free to speak their minds, to be controversial, without a crowd booing in response to a dodgy opinion.

That recklessness certainly comes with its own host of problems in regard to spreading misinformation, but generally speaking, a Rogan interview is likely to outshine any stilted conversation that David Letterman can produce. And the wide variety of Rogan’s guests means that there’s always a good chance of being exposed to a novel, interesting viewpoint. 

Rogan’s relaxed attitude, open mind, and accessibility, led to his podcast becoming an incredibly powerful platform, a potential launch pad for fame and fortune. But that all-important accessibility is soon to be a thing of the past, as Rogan recently signed an exclusivity deal with Spotify, which will go into effect some time after September.  

The Joe Rogan Experience will still be free to listen to, and video will still be available, but listeners will need to download the Spotify app to access the podcast, limiting his reach, and potentially dampening the enthusiasm of his massive fanbase.

Placing barriers over podcasts is never a good idea, no matter how slight and insignificant - there’s plenty of other podcasts out there to choose from nowadays, and meeting listeners where they are is always going to be a winning strategy, rather than luring them over to a single app.

However, clips are still going to find their way to YouTube, meaning those viral moments of Elon Musk pretending to inhale a joint, Alex Jones bursting a blood vessel while ranting about interdimensional pedophiles, or Neil Degrasse Tyson pointing out logic gaps in mindless blockbusters, will still be available - but to hear the full interviews, you’re going to need to download Spotify.  

It might just be the beginning of the end of Rogan’s dominance, as his fellow podcasters have an opportunity to fill the space left behind. 

There’s also the fact that Joe Rogan’s “Everyman” image is beginning to wobble, as COVID-19 and the limitations of quarantine have become a topic often complained about on the show, Rogan’s protective bubble of wealth and fame shimmering brighter than ever. 

Watching Joe Rogan and Elon Musk discuss a global pandemic as though it's nothing more than an annoying inconvenience for them is pretty damn distasteful, and goes directly against Rogan’s relatability, so integral to the appeal of his podcast. 

Being humble and relatively grounded was vital to Rogan’s meteoric rise, and that shift in tone, combined with the exclusivity deal, might prompt a sizable chunk of Rogan’s audience to move to greener pastures. 

We’ll have to wait and see - after all, the podcasting war between Spotify and Apple has only just begun. Rogan might just emerge from the ensuing debris, victorious.