‘The Joe Rogan Experience,’ Spotify’s flagship podcast, mysteriously vanished

• Joe Rogan’s podcast disappeared from Spotify’s catalogue on Monday and Friday.

• The initial outage prompted some speculation from fans that Rogan had been removed, The LA Times reported.

• Spotify said the first incident was due to a technical issue, but has not responded to Monday’s outage.

“The Joe Rogan Experience,” the top podcast on Spotify, disappeared from the streaming platform’s mobile apps and website twice within the span of a week, several media outlets reported.

All episodes of Rogan’s podcast were inaccessible on Monday morning, The Independent first reported, but it was back online as of Monday evening.

The popular show also vanished briefly last Friday, though Spotify said at the time that several other podcasts had been affected and blamed technical issues, Rolling Stone reported. The hour-long shortage had instigated speculation among fans that Rogan was blocked from the platform, The Los Angeles Times reported.

While Spotify hasn’t publicly stated why the podcast went down a second time, the outages occurred several weeks after Rogan drew controversy for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and became the center of a debate around free speech on the platform.

Musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both asked Spotify to remove their music from the platform in protest of Rogan’s comments. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek defended Rogan, saying his platform wouldn’t silence the former “Fear Factor” host, adding that “canceling voices is a slippery slope.”

“The Joe Rogan Experience” signed exclusive rights to Spotify in May 2020, a deal that was reported by The New York Times to be worth $200 million.

Spotify did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

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