About two weeks ago, Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum; either him or Joe Rogan. The platform chose Rogan, with whom they have a contractual obligation. Now the rock star wants Spotify employees that disagree with Rogan being on the platform to quit.
“To the musicians and creators in this world, I say this: You must be able to find a better place than Spotify to be the home of your art,” Young wrote in a post on his Neil Young Archives site.
“To the workers at Spotify, I say Daniel Ek is your problem — not Joe Rogan. Ek pulls the strings. Get out of the place before it eats up your soul. The goals stated by Ek are about numbers — not art, not creativity.”
The war between Young and Spotify stems from the alleged COVID-19 “misinformation” spread by Joe Rogan, on his top-ranked podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience.
Spotify and Ek’s responses do not show any indication that they plan on dropping Joe Rogan. However, they removed about 70 previous episodes of the podcast from Spotify – something that Rogan allegedly agreed to.
After asking the platform to pull his music or sever ties with Rogan, Young went on to attack Spotify’s quality.
“Amazon, Apple Music, and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty, degraded, and neutered sound of Spotify. If you support Spotify, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. Spotify plays the artists’ music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.”
In a January 28 blog post, Young oddly claimed that he “supports free speech,” and he does not support censorship. But Spotify, as a private company, can “choose what they profit from.”
