MUSIC

Neil Young Pulls His Music From Spotify

Young takes a principled stance against the spread of deadly misinformation

Neil Young has always been a man of principle who doesn’t tolerate bullshit.

His latest move is further proof of that.

On Monday, Young sent a letter to his management and to Warner Records, his record label, instructing them to immediately contact Spotify and have his music removed from the streaming platform over the fact that they are allowing COVID-19 misinformation to be spread by Joe Rogan on his podcast.

According to The New York Times:

In his original letter, which Young had addressed to his label, Warner Records, and his manager, he said: “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform.”

He added: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Rogan has been guilty of irresponsibly spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines on his podcast for the past several months. When Young became aware of this, he made the call to pull his entire music catalog in a move that speaks volumes about his integrity as a caring and decent human being.

It was reported earlier this afternoon that Spotify had begun the process of removing Young’s catalog from their servers and, as of the time of this writing, it appears that all of this music is now gone.

While this debacle demonstrates Young’s commitment to stand up for what’s right in a time when too few others are doing so, it also publicly illustrates Spotify’s choice to do the wrong thing by ignoring the fact that deadly misinformation is being spread via their platform.

Rogan has the most popular podcast on Spotify, with an average of 11 million listeners per episode.

The above-referenced article goes on to say:

Spotify has defended Rogan in the past, including after an episode that featured the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2020.

“We want creators to create,” Daniel Ek, the chief executive and co-founder of Spotify, told The Financial Times then. “It’s what they do best. We’re not looking to play a role in what they should say.”

Spotify has an exclusive contract with Rogan which I’m willing to bet has no clause built-in regarding legal recourse in the event that Rogan’s podcast spreads lies regarding matters of public health. That’s entirely speculation on my part, but I doubt that even the finest legal minds could have foreseen the need to lawfully stem a tidal wave of deception in the event that a global pandemic occurred.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s possibly naive to think that Spotify is choosing Rogan over Young simply out of some contractual obligation. I just think they don’t want to get their hands any dirtier than they already have.

In this writer’s opinion, Spotify, as a company, put itself in this position when it chose to host podcasts on its platform which — up until then — had been solely focused on music. By opening itself up to podcasters, it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t know that something like this could happen.

I’ve always supported Spotify, but I think it’s wrong of them to continue hosting Rogan’s show, particularly in light of these dire circumstances.

Today, Young released the following statement:

SPOTIFY has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.

I first learned of this problem by reading that 200 plus doctors had joined forces, taking on the dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in SPOTIFY programming.

Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth.

These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.

All my music is available on SPOTIFY, being sold to these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on SPOTIFY, and people like me are supporting SPOTIFY by presenting my music there.

I realized I could not continue to support SPOTIFY’s life threatening misinformation to the music loving public.

Before I told my friends at Warner Bros about my desire to leave the SPOTIFY platform, I was reminded by my own legal forces that contractually I did not have the control of my music to do that. I announced I was leaving anyway, because I knew I was. I was prepared to do all I could and more just to make sure that happened.

I want to thank my truly great and supportive record company Warner Brothers — Reprise Records, for standing with me in my decision to pull all my music from Spotify. Thank You!

Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world, almost every record I have ever released is available — my life’s music — a huge loss for my record company to absorb. Yet my friends at WARNER BROTHERS REPRISE stood with me, recognizing the threat the COVID misinformation on SPOTIFY posed to the world — particularly for our young people who think everything they hear on SPOTIFY is true. Unfortunately it is not.

Thank you WARNER BROTHERS for standing with me and taking the hit — losing 60% of my world wide streaming income in the name of Truth.

SPOTIFY has become the home of life threatening COVID misinformation. Lies being sold for money.

There is an upside for my listeners, people who may be listening to the 60 years of music I have made in my life so far. It is this: many other platforms, Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz, to name a few, present my music today in all its High-Resolution glory — the way it is intended to be heard, while unfortunately SPOTIFY continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art. But now that is in the past for me. Soon my music will live on in a better place.

I truly want to thank the many, many people who have reached out to me thanking me for taking this position — people who are health professionals on the front lines, people who have lost loved ones to COVID or who are worried for their own children and families. I have never felt so much love coming from so many.

I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the SPOTIFY platform and stop supporting SPOTIFY’s deadly misinformation about COVID.

In the name of Truth.

neil young

Sadly, it’s rare and, therefore, beyond remarkable and refreshing to see a major artist like Neil Young publicly take such a conscientious and virtuous stance against a platform allowing lies to be sold as truth, particularly in the middle of a public health crisis when those lies are, quite literally, getting people killed.

I wish more artists would follow his noble example.

I’ve always been a big fan of Neil Young.

Today, I’m an even bigger fan.

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