Spotify sees huge increase in traffic to cancellation page

Traffic to the cancellation page of Spotify Premium has jumped significantly in recent weeks, in midst of a backlash against the streaming giant due to its support of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' podcast.

Visitors looking to cancel their subscriptions has nearly tripled in recent weeks - an analytics firm has told CNN that traffic to the page has seen a spike of 196% week-on-week.

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The data that the analytics firm, SimilarWeb, used compared the traffic from the week starting January 17 to the week starting January 24; in the week of January 17, 39,924 visits, whereas on the week beginning on January 24 118,168 visits were recorded.

Seema Shah, who is a lead researcher at the firm, says that these figures are unprecedented.

"This is a huge spike," she said. "It implies people were passionate about the issue and took immediate action. We'll see if it keeps rising."

CNN reports that the firm had never seen anything like it before.

As it stands, the numbers for traffic does not appear to be slowing down and could increase due to new criticism Joe Rogan is facing over using racial slurs in old episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience".

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Rogan, whose contract with Spotify is worth a reported $100 million, apologised on Saturday for these racial slurs being used in the past.

Several people have been criticising, boycotting and lashing out on the streaming giant over the past few weeks, from musicians to scientists.

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Hundreds of academics and medical experts, who are requesting the streaming giant address the COVID misinformation being aired on Joe Rogan's podcast, have signed an open letter to the streaming giant.

High profile musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have pulled their content from the platform.

Last week it was reported that Spotify's market value has plummeted by $2.1 billion in just one week amid controversy around the platform's continued support of podcaster Joe Rogan.

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Spotify has recently announced a list of initiatives in hope to combat misinformation on its platform, this includes having implemented content advisories for podcasts discussing COVID-19.

Currently Spotify Premium is $9.99 per month and allows users to have an unlimited, ad-free experience.

CNN has reached out to Spotify for a comment.

Aneesa Ahmed is Mixmag's Digital Intern, follow her on Twitter