Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 28-01-2022
Neil Young vs Joe Rogen x Spotify | Fallon, Paris & Bored Apes | Taylor vs Damon | Joe Lycett vs HMG
Neil Young vs Joe Rogan x Spotify
How many reputational crises can Spotify stomach before facing commercial consequences? They'll survive this week’s battle with Neil Young, but the war isn't over yet.
Young took an aggressive public stance against Spotify, threatening to pull his catalogue from the streaming giant if they failed to address podcast host Joe Rogan's track record of Covid and vaccine misinformation.
It's a bold move by Young. Spotify is locked into an exclusive deal with Rogan to the tune of $100m and he must have known that any decisive action wouldn't happen immediately, if at all. Indeed, Spotify began removing Young's famously extensive catalogue, leaving them looking like the baddies, or at least as if they had sided with Rogan, adding another comms issue to their ongoing image problem around paying their artists a fair wage.
To no one's surprise, #CancelSpotify and #ByeByeSpotify are trending, and although it will be difficult to tell whether this will significantly affect their bottom line, in reputation terms Spotify have taken a hit.
Neil Young's principled approach is a powerful statement, which might even boost concert ticket and record sales. And it won't harm Joe Rogan, who has a loyal fanbase that this news won't sway. Even if it did, Rogan has an army of prospective sponsors or publishing partners that won't present any moral dilemma for the controversial presenter, e.g. gambling companies and alcohol brands - so he doesn't need Spotify. And who knows, he might even... make a podcast about it.
It's not just Spotify facing calls to moderate controversial content. Substack is also under scrutiny for profiting from, and making profit for anti-vaxxers - a reported $2.5m (minimum). But of course, both Spotify and Substack are using the tried and tested "hands-off approach" defence tactic to content moderation.
Ultimately, these giant operations will always follow the money and bank on our collective short-term memories and desire to have the most convenient service, where Spotify and Substack appear to triumph. The longer term problem for Spotify is the threat of someone like Taylor Swift boycotting now that a precedent has been set. Although labels will be hesitant, artists are getting sick of Spotify’s arguably exploitative means of revenue distribution; could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Probably not but we're here for the drama.
NFT Mania Risks Turning Whole of Humanity into Bored Apes
For celebrities seeking a low-effort, high-return way to keep both their bank balance and their headline count healthy, championing or launching collections of NFTs is becoming nearly as much of a staple as official merch or product deals.
This week we saw clear evidence that we have moved on from the early adopter phase of celebrity NFTs and into the ‘overpacked bandwagon trundling towards a chasm’ phase.
Firstly a bizarre exchange in which Jimmy Fallon took his unparalleled skill for celebrity arslicken digital by purchasing a ‘Bored Ape’ NFT on the advice of newly minted crypto Svengali, Paris Hilton (who had seen him interviewing artist Beeple on the show). A whole segment of the show was dedicated to the pair showing off (physical manifestations of) their (of course, digital) apes. It confused those unfamiliar with the NFT market, cringed out many of those who know a bit, and may have landed Fallon in trouble for plugging a product for personal gain.
Earlier this week former footballer John Terry (for younger readers unfamiliar with the legendary former England and Chelsea captain’s off-field persona, imagine the exact opposite of Marcus Rashford) found himself in trouble for depicting black former teammate Willian as…you guessed it…a monkey, in a new NFT. If that controversy wasn’t enough for a man who has previously been accused of racist abuse, it alerted his former club and several football governing bodies to the fact that he might be using their IP without permission.
The real problem for these bandwagoneering celebs is that these missteps and blunders expose the cynical, inauthentic, opportunistic way they entered the NFT community, who, although susceptible to, even fuelled by this kind of get-rich-before-the-suckers-catch-on behaviour, can generally distinguish between a work of art, and a digital rendering of tacky off-brand gift-shop merch.
Swift vs Albarn
From Bored Apes to unwise Gorillaz (sorry) Damon Albarn had a stinker this week, suggesting in a panel discussion that Taylor Swift, famously and formidably vociferous advocate of recognition for women in music (not least herself), doesn’t write her own songs and then blaming it on ‘clickbait’ after the LA Times accurately reported what he had said, and Taylor took things to Twitter.
Firstly, it was a dumb thing for Albarn to say and then double-down on. He’s a significant enough figure that anything he says on record in a public forum is potentially news. There’s also a particularly ‘ageing shock jock’ tang to the outdated values of dumping on pop music because you’re a rocker, even before you start on the problematic gender politics. Then he took a similarly old-fashioned route of blaming the media, which does not wash with an interrogative and cynical public able to find out the facts for themselves.
Then there’s Taylor. At least one commentator questioned whether she needed to keep beating Albarn when the internet was doing it for her and his comments had not scratched her reputation, but a more common view is that she was striking out for all women in music who have their artistry of ability questioned by men in such gendered fashion. She continues to reign imperious.
Licentious Lycett Strikes Again
Remember a couple of years ago, when comedian Joe Lycett changed his name by deed poll to save small-biz brewer Boss Brewery from being sued by Hugo Boss? Well, his Robin Hood mission to right societal wrongs reached even greater heights this week.
In a spoof leak of the Sue Gray report, posted on Twitter (since deleted), Lycett writes a series of imaginary findings from Gray – tales of party games like ‘Pass the Ar$£-hole’ and renditions of Hear’Say’s hit ‘Pure and Simple’ – all signed off by fake-Sue’s email: ItsAllSueGravyBaby@aol.com.
A day later, Lycett posted another tweet, this time a series of messages from a young civil servant. ‘Your tweet this morning was read as an actual leak of Sue Gray’s report…U had MP staff literally running around panicking from what it said’, they read.
The posts quickly went viral, the irony of government staff believing such tongue-in-cheek claims not lost on the public: Looks like those spoof findings weren’t beyond the realms of possibility at all.
The story has now been shared across all of the national papers, drumming up hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. It’s a testament to the power of comedy to bring clarity to the biggest and murkiest of situations, and to channel anger into something productive and unifying. In one fell swoop, Lycett managed to pull the rug from under the government’s feet, brilliantly exposing their foibles once again. But, most importantly, he was able to bring the whole nation with him whilst he did it.