Podcasts not available in my region [Middle East]

[abu_3adel]

I’m a big fan of the Joe Rogan Experience and ever since the news of its move to Spotify on September, I’ve been trying to find out if there is a plan to expand the reach of podcasts to my region.

[abu_3adel]

We are still not getting real answers or explanation. Why are customers in the Middle East not getting the podcast service? Pure and simple .. 

[Novy]

Hey folks,

Thanks for your replies. 

We understand where you're coming from. However, there isn't any info we can share regarding this at the moment. This is why we can't commit to a specific timeline for this to be available in your region. 

As @Jeremy mentioned, we encourage you to keep an eye out on our newsroom because that's where you'll be able to find info regarding this, if there's any. 

We'd also recommend keeping your app up to date so that you don't miss it when it becomes available. 

Cheers.

[Manargamie]

I have no idea if it'll help but make sure to vote here

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Podcasts-Podcasts-in-Egypt/idc-p/5165166#M...

[Manargamie]

I have a feeling that the people in charge just don't care enough, lol.

It shouldn't be so hard.

[abu_3adel]

Thanks ! I voted for the idea 

I was thinking of doing the same thing too 

also liked all the supportive comments 

[abu_3adel]

Hi Novy,

You are the third moderator to reply to this thread with no real answers or solutions so it seems pretty obvious by now that writing a post here isn’t getting us anywhere. What are we supposed to do to get our voices heard? We are missing some great guests on Joe Rogan 😡 The only reason why we are writing here is that we don’t want to go with illegal methods to access what we want to listen to. So please, we appreciate any support you can provide to get our voice heard. We have memorized to heart what you and your colleagues have written so far. Surprise us! 

[abu_3adel]

Hello Moderators, just letting you know that we are missing Dave Chappelle’s long awaited interview on the Joe Rogan Experience here in the MENA region. #disappointing

[abu_3adel]

In two months it will be a year since I created this topic. Nothing has been done so far 😌

[abu_3adel]

Hello again,

We just missed the Joe Rogan Experience episode with Quentin Tarantino, the relevant teams seems to be ignoring any plans to roll out Spotify’s podcast service in our region.

[abu_3adel]

Hi, we just missed a new episode with Andrew Huberman, one of the best people to sit with Joe Rogan. This makes me very unsatisfied as a costumer 🤬

[abu_3adel]

Hello, in 2 weeks it will be a whole year since I created this thread 😵‍💫 I’m very disappointed in how this is being handled if it’s being handled at all 🙂

It’s extremely frustrating those of us following Joe Rogan for years are unable to watch his podcasts anymore , and what makes it worse is how Spotify is handling, or lack of action, of this issue. 🤬

We have been missing amazing guests 

[Jeremy]

Hi there folks,

Thank you for your posts and feedback.

We understand that things can feel frustrating when features don't  exist as you'd like them to. Rest assured that we're always striving to please our users.

At the moment, we can say when or if this will be rolled out.

Once again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help you with anything else. 

Take care!

[abu_3adel]

Hi again, I just came to know that a neighboring country in MENA has the podcast service rolled out. I seriously don’t know why it’s so hard to have the service rolled out all over the MENA region given that the content is owned by Spotify 😵‍💫

[abu_3adel]

Hi Jeremy,

Dropped by to let you know we are still missing great guests because you guys don’t care about JRE fans , thanks 

[abu_3adel]

Hi Jeremy, great guests but we can’t listen to them … you’ve shown how little #spotify cares about us 

[soulbound60]

am just like you
and yet they didn't fix this problem !

[OleksandrTkachuk]

Hi there, it’s a little more than a year since Spotify officially launched in Ukraine, and a lot of people were excited, including me.

Finally we could listen to our favourite music and podcasts on Spotify with no shenanigans. But who would have thought, all we got was music, literally not a single show, even “exclusives” like JRE, nothing.

Some people are calling this “censoring”, moderators are calling this a “feature that doesn’t exist as we would like it to”, and I would say that this is unfair, and it’s a complete bulls***.

Please, as your paid costumers, we want premium experience, We want our Joe Rogan Experience!

[Lubnamarar]

The podcast feature is still not available in the middle east. its been two years since this complaint is posted. when will this feature be available? most of spotify’s content is exclusive which is so unfair! please update us.

[U_l_T]

Hello, just wanted to check if this feature has been added to the rest of MENA yet, I live in Iraq and I think we were one of the last countries in the region to have official Spotify service working without a vpn. I noticed we had no podcasts whatsoever, which is weird, but i thought maybe because iraq is a new region... However it seems like this issue has been ongoing for almost two years throughout the whole region not just iraq. Im wondering if there's any updates on which countries have had this featured added recently, if any at all?

[CarlosE]

Hey @U_l_T,

Thanks for your reply in this thread 🙂
 

We appreciate your feedback. We know you’d like to make this as an opportunity for Spotify to become even better. 
 

For now, we can't say when or if this will be rolled out. We can confirm for the moment it's not available in your region. 

We suggest keeping an eye out on our Newsroom because that's where you'll be able to find info regarding this, if there's any. We'd also recommend keeping your app up to date so that you don't miss it when it becomes available.

We'll be here if anything else comes up. Once again, thanks for the feedback.

Cheers!