Study Claims About 1 In 5 Spotify Users Plan To Drop Over Joe Rogan

Everyone has been talking about deleting their Spotify accounts because of the controversy surrounding Joe Rogan and his polarizing podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience," but is anyone actually going to do it?

That's what one study planned to find out!

On February 1, Forrester Research conducted a poll that asked users what, if any, the Joe Rogan controversy had on their Spotify subscription.

19% of users - close to 1 in 5 people - said that they have either already canceled their service or plan to.

Although it may sound like a lot, 54% of users - more than half - have no intention of canceling their subscription. 18.5% said they would consider canceling if more artists pulled their music from the platform. 8.5% said that they considered canceling their subscription, but the features Spotify provides are just too important for them to part with.

Although 19% percent of Spotify's user base is still a solid amount of people, the study did not question every single Spotify user. Instead, they only sampled 657 online consumers across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, of which only approximately one-third of the people participating in the study were Spotify users.

Considering Spotify has a user base of 406 million internationally and 180 million paid subscribers, it's irresponsible to say that this study of 657 people speaks for a majority of the Spotify fanbase.

However, it remains to be seen what - if any - impact Joe Rogan's recent controversy has on users' Spotify subscriptions.

Although the COVID-19 controversy has been seemingly put to rest with Spotify adding COVID-19 content advisories to certain episodes, artist India Arie put Rogan on blast when she posted a video to her Instagram Stories containing a video montage of times Rogan has said the "N-word" on his podcast.

On Saturday, Rogan posted a six-minute long video on Instagram to apologize for his comments, but make it clear that he is "not racist."

“I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” he began. He claimed that the clips India Arie posted over a decade ago. However, he admitted, “all smushed together and it looks f----ing horrible, even to me.”

“Now I know that to most people there’s no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast,” he continued. “And I agree with that now.”

“I haven’t said it in years,” he added. “But for a long time when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation, instead of saying the N-word I would just say the word. I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”

“It’s a very unusual word, but it’s not my word to use,” he went on. “I’m well aware of that now. But for years I used it in that manner. I never used it to be racist because I’m not racist. But whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say ‘I’m not racist,’ you’ve f---ed up. And I clearly have f---ed up.”

Rogan added that his specific “Planet of the Apes” comment was a “f---ing idiotic thing to say.” Joe even admits in the video clip during the podcast “That was a really racist thing for me to say.” Now, he says that he would take his comment back if he could.

“Obviously, that’s not possible,” he continued. “But I do hope that this can be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn’t realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person’s mouth in context or out of context.”

He offered his “sincere and humble apologies” and said that “I wish there was more that I could say but all of this is just me talking from the bottom of my heart. It makes me sick watching that video. But hopefully, at least some of you will accept this and understand where I’m coming from.”

Fans can watch the full apology below.