Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

Spotify Isn’t Really About the Music Anymore

Spotify Isn’t Really About the Music Anymore

In choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the company has made its new priorities clear to listeners.
The questions that arise in the face of any boycott effort—whether against an unethical retailer, a disgraced performer, or an exploitative employer—can be paralyzing. We live in a world of compromise and wickedness, built of systems guided not by virtue but by profit. So why, the boycotter must be asked, draw the line here? We also live in a world in which individuals rarely ever wield more power than institutions. Can any one person’s resistance matter?

Those questions are, in the case of musicians asking to pull their music from Spotify to protest vaccine misinformation, answerable. They’re doing something significant, and they’re doing something that can make a difference, simply by drawing attention to what Spotify has become: a content publisher whose main incentive to act responsibly will come from public scrutiny.

On Monday, Rolling Stone reported that the 76-year-old rock titan Neil Young sent a letter telling his management team and record label that Spotify would have to choose between hosting his music and hosting the hugely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. Young’s letter was inspired by another letter, signed by 270 scientists, doctors, and other health professionals earlier in January. It alleged that Rogan had broadcast inaccuracies about COVID-19, including by hosting guests who plugged ivermectin as an effective treatment and by portraying vaccines as unnecessary for young people. (Rogan has said that he is “not an anti-vaxx person.”) Spotify, Young wrote, could “have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Spotify picked the podcaster over the musician. On the Beach, “Old Man,” and most of the rest of Young’s gorgeous, warbling catalog as a lead artist is no longer available to Spotify’s 381 million users (though they can still gently blast Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). The Joe Rogan Experience, a chat show about such subjects as health and society and mixed martial arts and aliens, remains available. In a statement, the company said that it wants “all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” asserted that it already removed “over 20,000 podcast episodes related to covid-19 since the start of the pandemic,” and expressed regrets about Young’s choice.

Rogan has been, for some years now, arguably the most influential podcaster on the planet. So Young’s move might seem futile, like a man protesting the weather, or self-defeating, like a novelist not wanting to be on the same bookstore shelves as Tom Clancy. But though no perfect analogy exists when it comes to Spotify—streaming is a new and evolving phenomenon—the better way to think of Young might be this: He’s like an advertiser pulling out from Fox News because of its continued reliance on Tucker Carlson.

Spotify, after all, is not a neutral distributor for independently generated works. Though its public statement about Young mentions “balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators,” Rogan is not just exercising his liberty to broadcast on Spotify. He is likely enjoying the more than $100 million the company reportedly paid as part of a May 2020 deal that made The Joe Rogan Experience’s past and future episodes available only on Spotify. The podcast is exclusive content—and prominent exclusive content at that.

The company’s deal with Rogan was part of a larger strategic shift whose implications listeners may not fully understand. Since launching in 2008, Spotify has transformed the music world by helping make on-demand streaming a reality for millions of listeners and rescuing the industry’s coffers from a years-long decline. But Spotify pays most of its revenues from songs back to labels and artists and has rarely turned a profit. In 2019, the company announced a new focus on “audio,” meaning recorded books, live chats, and the booming medium of podcasts. Spotify began paying out millions in exclusive deals with such creators as Rogan, the Obamas, Bill Simmons’s Ringer network, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Spotify’s bet on podcasts has attracted subscribers and ad dollars, but Young’s protest of Rogan highlights one downside of it: Spotify has responsibility for its content, and its content may be controversial. Policing speech is, to be sure, not an entirely new challenge for Spotify. The company has removed racist music and briefly attempted to punish artists who had been accused of personal misconduct. Its recent statement about Young said that it has also taken action against a number of COVID-related podcasts (though the statement didn’t quite spell out why). But when you’ve paid a fortune for a podcast, pulling episodes for any reason is not going to be a routine, or attractive, proposition.

What’s more, the company now finds itself where few companies intend to be: as a figure in the culture wars. For years, musicians have spoken out about Spotify’s technology and business practices, but those complaints have rarely reached the level of visibility that Young’s now have. That is surely because Young is taking a stand on the highly politicized issues of vaccine skepticism, leading conservative commentators to defend Rogan with familiar rhetoric about cancel culture. Competing hashtags such as #SpotifyDeleted and #ThanksJoeRogan are now trending.

Perhaps this is the start of a movement. Last night, Young’s legendary pal Joni Mitchell announced that she, too, wanted to secede from Spotify “in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities.” The withdrawal of two of the most important living musicians obviously dents the company’s value proposition, but the bigger impact may simply be that an alarm has been sounded. Spotify faces strong competition for capturing the world’s eardrums, and Apple, Amazon, Tidal, Bandcamp, and the local record store can make a new pitch: Spend your dollars on music, not on dangerous nonsense.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
Trump Steamrolls EU in Landmark Trade Win: US–EU Trade Deal Imposes 15% Tariff on European Imports
ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman says people share personal info with ChatGPT but don’t know chats can be used as court evidence in legal cases.
Intel Reports Revenue Beats but Sees 81% Rise in Losses
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
Tulsi Gabbard Unveils Evidence Alleging Political Manipulation of Intelligence During Trump Administration
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Trump Announces Coca-Cola to Shift to Cane Sugar in U.S. Production
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A New Open-Source AI Model
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
EU Delays Retaliatory Tariffs Amid New U.S. Threats on Imports
Trump Proposes Supplying Arms to Ukraine Through NATO Allies
US Opens First Rare Earth Mine in Over 70 Years in Wyoming
Bitcoin Reaches New Milestone of $116,000
Severe Heatwave Claims 2,300 Lives Across Europe
Declining Beer Consumption Signals Cultural Shift in Germany
Emails Leaked: How Passenger Luggage Became a Side Income for Airport Workers
Polish MEP: “Dear Leftists - China is laughing at you, Russia is laughing, India is laughing”
Western Europe Records Hottest June on Record
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
China’s Central Bank Consults European Peers on Low-Rate Strategies
France Requests Airlines to Cut Flights at Paris Airports Amid Planned Air Traffic Controller Strike
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
×