Singer-songwriter Neil Young ripped into Spotify on Monday, saying he’s pulling his entire catalogue from the music streaming service because they are the exclusive distributor of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, which has dabbled in COVID-19 misinformation.
The rocker, who survived polio as a child, penned an open letter to his management team and his music distributor – which he also shared on his website.
“Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible,” Young wrote. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
“Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule,” the letter continues. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
The letter has since been deleted. It echoes longstanding criticism of Rogan, who signed a $100 million deal with the streaming service in 2020. CBS News explains:
Rogan has famously questioned COVID-19 vaccines on his show, and when he got COVID-19 last year, said he took ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that’s been heavily promoted on social media despite having no proven benefit against COVID-19.
“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE [Joe Rogan Experience], which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” Young wrote in his letter. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
BBC adds additional context:
Last month, 270 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter requesting that Spotify implement a policy for dealing with misinformation because of Rogan’s “concerning history” in discussing the Covid-19 pandemic.
The letter cited an episode in which Rogan interviewed Dr Robert Malone, a virologist who worked on early research into the mRNA technology behind several Covid-19 vaccines, but who is now critical of the treatments.
Both men were criticised for promoting conspiracy theories, including the false claim that hospitals are financially incentivised to falsely diagnose deaths as having been caused by Covid-19.
Malone also incorrectly stated that getting vaccinated puts people who have already had Covid-19 at higher risk, and claimed world leaders had hypnotised the public into supporting vaccines, drawing parallels between the pandemic and the rise of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany.
Billboard provides more background on the Spotify-Rogan relationship:
Rogan’s tenure with Spotify has been rocky from the start. On Sept. 2, 2020, the company’s shares plummeted nearly 9% after it was reported that episodes featuring right-wing personalities were removed from the podcast’s back catalog prior to its debut on the service. Despite this purge, the company later came under fire with some of its employees over its decision to make Rogan episodes with “transphobic content” available to stream, leading to a series of internal discussions in which founder Daniel Ek reportedly defended the company’s decision not to remove the controversial episodes.
Beyond Rogan, Spotify has had other recent public relations issues. In November, Ek spurred a slowly growing “boycott Spotify” movement after announcing a $114 million investment in Helsing, a European security/defense technology startup that manufactures artificial-intelligence software to “keep liberal democracies from harm.”
