People #CancelSpotify as it ditches Neil Young songs over a Joe Rogan spat
What you need to know
Twitter is full of people canceling Spotify over Neil Young.
Neil Young told Spotify to remove his music over concerns that Joe Rogan is spreading “fake information” about COVID-19 vaccines.
Spotify has begun to remove Neil Young songs from its platform.
Apple Music’s over here grinning to itself.
We truly are in the strangest timeline amid news that Spotify is removing Neil Young’s songs from its platform over a disagreement about Joe Rogan. But here we are, and those songs are disappearing as of Thanos snapped his big purple fingers all over again.
The backstory is as weird as it sounds. First, Neil Young told Spotify that he wanted all of his songs to be removed from the platform because “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.” Young was of course talking about Joe Rogan and his podcast’s history with misinformation relating to vaccines.
Spotify apparently sided with its cash cow, keeping Rogan’s podcast in play and ditching everything with Young’s name on it. And the internet isn’t happy — hence the #CancelSpotify hashtag that’s currently doing the rounds on Twitter. Someone at Apple Music is sitting watching the subscriber counter go crazy right about now.
Neil Young from the top rope!
I also recently made the switch to @AppleMusic bc I’m not paying @Spotify to spread COVID disinfo in the middle of a pandemic.#DeleteSpotify #CancelSpotifyhttps://t.co/gSnfLTSGmL
— Sal Trifilio (@SalTrifilio) January 25, 2022
#cancelspotify Hello @AppleMusic! https://t.co/2txahxNtfh
— linderama65 (@linderama65) January 27, 2022
If you give me a choice of choosing one of greatest songwriters in music, or some angry white man who supports propaganda of lies… well…#cancelspotify
Apple Music here we come. https://t.co/SNa0bfocqy
— Nick. (@NickSChandler) January 27, 2022
Spotify stands by its decision, saying that it has policies in place to deal with COVID misinformation.
“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,” a spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
There is little chance people leaving Spotify for Apple Music will make a huge dent in the overall subscriber counts of course, but it’s always interesting to see the kinds of things that will make people switch like this. Apple Music won’t be the only winner here, either. YouTube Music and Amazon Music are fine services as well — although Apple Music is still perhaps the best iPhone music streaming service around right now.
