Neil Young pens open letter to Spotify: 'They can have Rogan or Young. Not both'

On Monday, famous rock ‘n’ roll musician Neil Young reportedly posted an open letter (now deleted) to his management team and record label demanding that his music be removed from music streaming juggernaut Spotify. Rolling Stone reports the letter highlights Young’s dissatisfaction with the streaming service’s support of podcaster Joe Rogan’s show The Joe Rogan Experience.

“They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.” This statement by Young comes less than two weeks after 270 doctors, scientists, and health professionals signed a letter to Spotify demanding the company “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform,” in regards to public health and COVID-19.

Young’s letter focused in how much damage Rogan and his (frequently) right-wing and science-skeptic guests, coupled with the generally unmitigated bullshit being spewed about health could cause in regards to misinforming the public. “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.”

Rogan signed a $100 million deal with Spotify in May of 2020. For many years now, Rogan’s intellectual curiosity has been very narrow in its breadth—pushing a generally unsophisticated libertarian view of the world (is there a sophisticated version Libertarianism?), that includes all of the anti-vaccine wishy-washiness that people afraid of things pretend is courage.

According to Billboard Magazine, Young tangled with Spotify and pulled most of his music from the service back in 2015. At the time he was protesting the sound quality offered up by the service. Young later relented.