Remember when podcasts were new and cool? It really wasn’t all that long ago. When they first began, it seemed like there weren’t too many of them. It felt like the field was dominated by former radio talk show personalities who had lost their major market gigs. The podcasts kept their name and voices in the public domain while giving them a chance to make a few bucks.

Over the years, as the popularity of podcasts has grown, we’ve been inundated with the number of them. Every topic you can think of has a podcast…in fact, multiple ones. New, politics, sports, music, movies, television, sex…and I can go on and on. And with the explosion of the forum, it seems like everyone and their next-door neighbor has their own podcast. It’s true! One of my former next-door neighbors told me he was starting a podcast about weed. And in a matter of days, it was up and active.

I feel like the only person without their own podcast. I’ve had a few ideas for one in the past but it never made it past the idea stage. But, that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen, right?

All this leads up to the controversy of the past few days. I have to admit that Joe Rogan isn’t really on my radar. I remember him as a minor character on the television show “NewsRadio”, and then as a host of “Fear Factor”, but that’s about it. I did know that he had a popular right-wing podcast, but so do hundreds of other Trumpians. I never would have guessed that he would have any kind of outlet that would attract an estimated eleven million listeners per episode. That’s right…11,000,000! And he does that three to four times each week. For this, Spotify pays about one hundred million dollars. That’s right….$100,000,000!!

So what if he spends his time spouting misinformation. So what if what he says may cost people their lives. That’s not what is important. What is important to Spotify are the numbers. 11,000,000 and $100,000,000!!!

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have been staples on the popular music scene since before Rogan was born. To call them legends would be an understatement. Their place in history is set. Long after both are gone, they’ll be remembered. I’m not sure we can say the same for Joe Rogan; that is still to be determined. However, when Neil Young gave Spotify his ‘me or him’ ultimatum, it didn’t take long for Spotify to make their choice. I doubt they gave it a second thought. When it came down to numbers and money over misinformation and lives, the latter was an easy choice for Spotify.

So back to my maybe-maybe not upcoming podcast. This may be the year. I’ve been thinking about another way to get these diatribes of mine into the atmosphere. While a book seems like a more likely forum, why not a spoken version. Hence, podcast?

Whenever you hear someone advertise their podcast, their pitch usually ends with the words “you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.” Well, when you’re looking for mine, real or imagined, it won’t be on Spotify.

Related Post: Neil Young is rocking in the free world as a United States citizen

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