Heloise Goy with Alexis Patri
After several days of threats to Spotify, American music icon Neil Young has decided to remove his work from the Swedish music streaming platform. The reason for this withdrawal is neither artistic nor financial, as one might expect. It is linked to a podcast about the coronavirus pandemic.
43 studio albums, 13 live albums, songs that have become folk-rock classics like heart of gold and Harvest… The work of Neil Young is plethoric. However, it has almost disappeared from Spotify. The “This is Neil Young” playlist, where Spotify usually lists tens and hundreds of all the great titles of an artist, only has six titles on Thursday. Blame it on the American star, who decided to withdraw from the Swedish music streaming platform.
The artist had been alerting for several days. Neil Young followed through on his threat. Before he massively withdrew his work, the singer and guitarist had 2.4 million subscribers and more than 6 million listeners per month on the platform. These figures then represented 60% of its income from streaming.
Neil Young at war against misinformation
The American made this drastic decision neither for artistic nor for financial reasons, although Spotify is regularly criticized for its low remuneration of artists. He actually accuses the Swedish platform of disinformation on the Covid-19. In question, the hosting of a very popular and controversial podcast by American Joe Rogan.
In an episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan defended conspiracy theories about the pandemic. He even pushed his listeners to use an unauthorized treatment against the virus. A problem all the more serious for Neil Young since this podcast was number 1 on Spotify last year.
In a post on his website, Neil Young claimed Spotify could have either Rogan or Young, but not both. He also called on other artists to follow his decision. For its part, the platform reacted. She regrets Neil Young’s decision and still hopes to welcome him back soon.