Spotify removes Neil Young’s music from its service after his protest over the continued broadcasting of Joe Rogan’s podcasts which appear to support false statements about the COVID-19 vaccine. In a now deleted open letter to his manager and an executive at his label WMGs’ Warner Brothers Reprise, Young said, “They can have (Joe) Rogan or Young – not both.” Rogan has been criticised by many for interviewing an infectious disease specialist who opposes COVID-19 vaccines for children.
Spotify responded with the following statement, “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
Young has replied to the Spotify statement in a new letter on his own site saying, “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.” The full text of his letter can be found here.
So far, no other artist has asked for their music to be removed from Spotify and Joe Rogan’s podcasts remain available.
