And every day that passed with no public comment or acknowledgement of receipt from Spotify, gave more time and fuel for critics to fill in the blanks and point to Spotify’s foot dragging. That’s 13 days that Spotify was no doubt trying to figure out how to respond. The Rogan story didn’t really explode until around January 12th. But in the case of Spotify, the first opportunity to respond to the situation came with the December 31st letter from 200+ members of the medical community requesting that Spotify establish a misinformation policy, citing an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast as a repeat offender in promoting COVID misinformation. Challenges aligning legal counsel, PR, C-Suite. Lesson 1: Respond quickly and adequately. Here are 5 lessons we can learn from Spotify’s recent challenges:

Spotify has become the latest platform ensnared in a communications crisis and, as music lovers and communicators, our team had some thoughts on the situation.

Until they recognize that and take steps to responsibly moderate the conversations and information shared on the platforms they run, the crisis they face will never cease. Social media and streaming services are not just platforms. Experiencing a communications crisis has become a sort of rite of passage for major media and tech players in the last decade and it’s easy to understand why: these platforms wield a lot of power.

Neil young spotify timeline