Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,31 Jan 2022,26 mins

How much will the Joe Rogan scandal hurt Spotify?

World Business Report

Available for over a year

Once Rogan started talking to people about Coronavirus he was accused of spreading misinformation, and artists including Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell threatened to remove their music from Spotify. Spotify has promised to post advisory warnings, Joe Rogan has apologised but the damage has been done. We spoke to Our North American Tech Correspondant James Clayton about the practical implications of this scandal and how worried Spotify should actually be. Sony has done a deal to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion. Now Bungie is a games developer and it comes soon after a rafte of similar deals. In fact the last year saw over a thousand private placements, mergers, and acquisitions in the games industry. To mention two of the biggest; Take-Two Interactive bought Zynga for $12.7 billion and Microsoft spent a massive 69 billion dollars buying Activision. There have recently been many other such deals, so what is the significance of Bungie, a question we put to our New York Business Correspondent Samira Hussein. Lastly, we're seeing a big moment for African music on the global stage. African artists are winning international awards and embarking on tours to the US and Europe. It seems major record companies want a piece of the action. They’ve been busy doing deals to sign African stars. Just recently, Warner Music in the US bought a controlling stake in a Johannesburg business which bills itself as “the home of African music”. So what’s going on, and what does it all mean for a new generation of African artists? We hear from Mike Johnson with an extended report. (IMAGE: GETTY)

Programme Website
More episodes