Rumble offered Joe Rogan $100 million to ditch Spotify

Rumble, a YouTube rival that's popular among conservative audiences and video creators, offered Joe Rogan $100 million to leave Spotify and join its service.

Rumble posted a message from CEO Chris Pavlovski on its Twitter account Monday asking Rogan to bring all of his shows to the service for payment over the course of four years.

"We'd like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place," Pavlovski said in the message. "This is our chance to save the world. And yes, this is totally legit."

Rumble was founded in 2013 and has gained traction from right-leaning audiences for its lack of moderation, which has allowed anti-vaccine misinformation to spread on the service. Last May, the company attracted an undisclosed amount of funding from investors such as Peter Thiel and “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, giving it a valuation of $500 million. It is unclear how Rumble plans to finance the Rogan offer.

Spotify has come under fire in recent weeks for not moderating Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which has frequently dug into problematic themes and spread misinformation. After major artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell left the audio service, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a blog post that the company "[doesn't] take on the position of being content censor."

Days later, Spotify took down 70 episodes of Rogan's podcast for using racial slurs, reportedly at Rogan’s request. Ek apologized to staff for the controversy in a company memo.

“Not only are some of Joe Rogan’s comments incredibly hurtful — I want to make clear that they do not represent the values of this company,” Ek wrote.

Spotify had previously paid Rogan $100 million to make The Joe Rogan Experience available exclusively on its service.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the names of Joe Rogan and Daniel Ek and the date of Pavlovski's post This story was updated Feb. 7, 2022.