Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: Him or Joe Rogan — and Spotify chose Joe Rogan.
Despite Spotify accounting for 60% of Young’s streaming music worldwide, the artist took the platform to task for hosting Joe Rogan. Rogan — and by extension Spotify — has come under fire for spreading misinformation regarding the COVID pandemic and various medical treatments, including vaccines.
Young decided he could no longer stand by and do nothing, telling Spotify to remove his music from their service.
“Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID,” Young wrote. “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.”
“I realized I could not continue to support Spotify’s life threatening misinformation to the music loving public,” Young continued.
The artist also took the opportunity to promote other platforms, highlighting the fact that other platforms have high-fidelity auto, something Spotify has promised but failed to deliver.
“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,” Young wrote.
The artist thanked Warner Bros for standing with him, despite the hit their business will take from Young’s music leaving the platform.
