He faces losing almost two thirds of his streaming revenue
Spotify is removing Neil Young‘s music catalog from its service after the singer published an open letter to platform demanding that the platform deal with vaccine misinformation coming from Joe Rogan‘s podcast.
Earlier this week, the “Like a Hurricane” singer published, and then swiftly deleted, a letter giving the streaming platform an ultimatum to either deal with Rogan or lose his music.
But it seems that Spotify were unwilling to meet Young’s demands, with the streaming platform now in the process of removing all of his music from their service.
A Spotify spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter: “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.”
In his letter, which was originally published on his website on January 24, Young said: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
In a follow-up letter published on Wednesday (January 26), the 76-year-old revealed that Spotify represented 60 per cent of his streaming revenue globally, which amounted to “a huge loss for [his] record company to absorb,”
Nevertheless, he moved forward with removing his catalogue because he “could not continue to support Spotify’s life-threatening misinformation to the music-loving public.”
The letter continues: “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.”
Rogan has faced criticism for some of his claims about covid-19 and the vaccine since the start of the pandemic.
He hosts The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, and is exclusive to Spotify.
In December a group of 270 doctors and other medical professionals also wrote a letter calling on Spotify to “mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform” shortly after Rogan featured a known vaccine sceptic on the podcast to promote baseless theories about the vaccines.
He has previously told listeners that they don’t need to worry about covid if they are a “healthy person,” and made unsubstantiated claims that the use of drugs such as ivermectin can help fight the virus.
Related links:
- Joe Rogan is sick of people mocking him for taking horse medicine
- Two-thirds of anti-vaxx propaganda online created by only 12 influencers, research finds
- Anti-vax podcaster who caught Covid at conspiracy conference dies
