Neil Young posted and deleted an ultimatum to Spotify regarding extremely successful podcaster Joe Rogan. His ultimatum? Remove Joe Rogan or remove his music. Spotify has spoken. His songs are being removed.
Earlier this week Young wrote an open letter to his management team and record label requesting his music be pulled from Spotify if they didn’t drop Rogan. He has since deleted the open letter.
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he continued. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Now, Spotify has apparently made its choice, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“While the letter has since been removed from Mr. Young’s website, he has been in discussions with his label, Warner Music Group Corp.’s Warner Records, and Spotify since then, and continued to hold his ground, according to the people. The formal request to remove the music was made Wednesday and could take several hours to take effect across Spotify’s service across the world,” the report states.
What is the big issue with Joe Rogan? His “Covid misinformation”. Now Rogan has had a variety of people on from Sanjay Gupta to Dr. Robert Malone discussing Covid, vaccines, and what he’s found to work when he was sick with the virus.
Spotify picked up exclusive rights to Rogan’s podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, for more than $100 million dollars. While Young stands to lose 60% of his streaming income.
“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,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement to USA TODAY Wednesday. “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
This isn’t the first time that he removed his music from Spotify. Several years ago he removed most of his music because he thought the sound quality was too low. He ended up relenting just to remove it yet again.
“That’s where people get music,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019. “I want people to hear my music no matter what they have to get through to do it. I’m just trying to make it so they hear a lot more and enjoy it a lot more, but sell it for the same price because music is music.”
Rogan’s podcast has attracted an estimated 11 million listeners. Would Spotify risk losing even a quarter of those listeners because an old rocker is mad?
He’s been outspoken about Covid and the treatments that are available receiving plenty of backlash from those who obey everything Fauci and daddy government tells them.
