UPDATE (1/26, 6:20 p.m. EST): Neil Young shared a statement to his official website following Spotify’s decision to consent to the singer-songwriter’s demand to remove his catalog from the platform, thanking his publisher Hipgnosis and his label Warner Records/Reprise for supporting his request. The full statement is below.
I want to thank my partners for standing with me.
My deal with Merck Mercuriadis and HIPGNOSIS began on January 1, 2021. The company HIPGNOSIS now has part of my publishing and I am very happy with their support. I want to personally thank Merck and HIPGNOSIS for standing with me, Losing 60% of worldwide streaming income by leaving SPOTIFY is a very big deal, a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and beliefs. Misinformation about COVID is over the line.
My good friends at WARNER BROTHERS – REPRISE also stand by me and I love them for it. Misinformation about COVID cannot be accepted. I sincerely hope that other artists can make a move, but I can’t really expect that to happen. I did this because I had no choice in my heart. It is who I am. I am not censoring anyone. I am speaking my own truth. I know Daniel Ek who owns SPOTIFY, a private business. I like Daniel. I wish he had not taken the steps he has taken because it stopped my music from being shared on his SPOTIFY platform. It stopped us from working together to spread the music. But we are still friends.
Warner and Hipgnosis, my great partners, are standing with me to help stop the flow of misinformation from SPOTIFY. Thanks so much to all of you. We did what we had to do.
Love Earth
Be well
Neil
Spotify is granting Neil Young’s wish and removing the singer-songwriter’s music from the platform, the company revealed Wednesday (Jan. 26).
On Monday, Young published an open letter requesting that his catalog be pulled from Spotify, citing the spread of vaccine misinformation on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast as the cause. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” Young wrote in the letter, which was addressed to his manager as well as the co-chairman and COO of Warner Records, which releases Young’s music through its Reprise Records imprint.
Rolling Stone was first to report on Young’s letter, which has since been deleted.
“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” said a Spotify spokesperson in a statement sent to Billboard. “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-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
Young’s manager and a Warner Records representative did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment.
In his letter, Young cited the enormous reach and influence of Rogan’s podcast in making his demand, writing, “With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
Though the situation with Young is unique, this isn’t the first time Spotify has removed artists’ content from the platform due to a dispute. In November, the company pulled a large amount of spoken-word content by major comedians including Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney and Jeff Foxworthy from the service following a battle with collection agencies Spoken Giants and Word Collections, which were arguing that comedians and spoken word artists should be paid royalties for their underlying works, not just their recordings.
The following month, comedian Lewis Black asked Spotify to remove the remainder of his works, after some (but not all) of his albums were pulled during the November purge. (The company doesn’t appear to have heeded Black’s request, as several of his albums remain on Spotify as of this writing.)
Though it’s extremely unlikely that Spotify will sever its ties with Rogan over the controversy, the company has removed controversial content from the platform in the past. In 2017, the company took down music from multiple groups that were deemed racist “hate bands” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The service subsequently announced a new policy around “hateful conduct,” which led the streamer to remove the music of R. Kelly, XXXTentacion and Tay-K from its editorial and algorithmic owned and operated playlists. But the company walked back that contentious policy three weeks later, stating in a blog post that the language in the provision was “too vague” and “created confusion and concern.”
Earlier this month, a group of 270 doctors, scientists, professors and other medical professionals also expressed concern over Rogan’s platforming of misinformation around COVID-19. In an open letter to Spotify, the signees asked the streaming service to implement a misinformation policy as a means of combatting claims made by Rogan and his guests. Among other comments, they noted that Rogan has discouraged young people from receiving the vaccine, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy” and promoted the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, contrary to FDA warnings against using the drug to treat the virus.
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.”
As for Young, this isn’t his first tangle with the streaming service. In 2015, the singer-songwriter removed his music from Spotify — along with Apple Music and other subscription streaming services — after stating that he felt the audio quality of the streamers was too low. His music reappeared on the platforms the following year.
At the time of publishing, Young’s music was still available on Spotify.