Spotify vs. Neil Young

Musician leads protest against streaming service over Rogen, COVID 'disinformation'

Almost two years into the pandemic, it’s become cliche to say, “We live in strange times.”

And yet…

For the past decade, the fractured relationship between David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young has become painful to watch, particularly between Crosby and Nash. Things have been so bad that the odds of CSNY agreeing on anything in the 21st century were the same as music CD sales increasing in the universe of anywhere/anytime streaming.

But with a country split by Covid and a giant gulf in what used to be the middle, the four classic rock activists reunited to take on a common enemy: big business.

Young’s request this week to remove his solo music from Spotify prompted his former bandmates to issue a statement asking to pull their music from the streaming service, which has 172 million subscribers. The moves are in protest over “fake information about vaccines” that is being spread on the “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

“While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences,” Crosby, Stills, and Nash said in the statement, which was posted to Twitter. “Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music — or the music we made together — to be on the same platform.”

---

---

With a limited number of artists (Joni Mitchell, India Aire) joining in so far, the long-term consequences of such a move are unknown, but Spotify’s stock took an immediate hit, dropping 17 percent on Thursday. And other large conglomerates, such as Apple Music, were quick to tout that Young and his former bandmates are still available on their services.

It didn’t take long for Spotify to issue a statement that Covid-related content would now come with advisories. And Rogen, who was ruled not to have violated the streamer’s standards, played the innocence card.

“I’m not trying to promote misinformation. I’m not trying to be controversial,” he said in an Instagram video. “… I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations.”

If you believe that, I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you. Apparently, a number of those “interesting conversations” also involved Rogen’s use of the n-word, which prompted Spotify to remove 70 episodes of his podcast last week. Rogen again apologized.

Wading Into Cancel Culture

As with anything these days, Young’s move prompted yet another dive into the “cancel culture” debate that has only worsened during the pandemic. Rogen’s defenders — his video was viewed more than 7 million times in four days — talk about his free speech rights.

Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, wrote to employees that while he “strongly condemns” Rogan’s words, he does not think “silencing Joe is the answer,” noting that “cancelling voices is a slippery slope.”

Translation: Facts and racist language, it seems, should never get in the way of an opinion no matter the vitriol and danger those opinions present. Especially when big money is involved.

“Imagine if Rogan were to use his incredibly powerful voice — he has some 11 million listeners per episode — to talk productively about all of this, to counter some of the destructive bilge instead of adding to it,” Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote in a column published Sunday. “Imagine if Spotify recognized that a platform is essentially a publisher, and that media organizations of all kinds constantly have to make decisions about what’s appropriate to put on the air, in their pages, or on their websites.”

As much as I appreciate Sullivan’s invocation of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in writing this, her view is sadly unrealistic. In most — not all, but most — instances, corporations like Spotify respond to backlashes only when the bottom line is affected or threatened.

And in the money vs. morals debate, money wins every time.

The Business of Streaming

Last weekend, Sweetheart PR publicist Rachel Hurley posted an excellent 2,500-word essay on Spotify and the music business to Facebook. Hurley used the Rogen/Young debate to look at how streaming is affecting most of the working musicians out there.

“Streaming isn’t keeping musicians from making a living. The real issue is that music is an over saturated market. There are too many musicians and too much music,” Hurley writes, noting that Spotify estimates 60,000 songs are uploaded to its platform every day.

Hurley continues: “You know the whole economic theory about the more there is of something, the less it's worth? The barrier to becoming a musician has been lowered to the ground. And that's great in terms of giving everyone equal access, but due to the influx of people participating, well, that's what has devalued the product.”

She’s right, and yet most of the comments on her post waded deep into the culture wars — an eternal debate with no winners, only losers. So many people simply refuse to look at the bigger picture: that the product we know and love — recorded music — is being persistently devalued.

That’s why it came as such a surprise to see this week’s other music miracle: a report that CD sales did in fact increase for the first time in 17 years in 2020 You can thank Adele and Taylor Swift for that anomaly, but it happened. (Vinyl sales continued to rise, too.)

Like many of my generation who grew up on vinyl, 8-tracks, and cassettes before evolving into CDs, I missed the widespread availability of physical music and the tactile experience of holding albums in my hand. I especially miss liner notes and credits, where I could see who was making the music, and then tracing the performers to other works and albums. Yes, you can do an Internet search, but that keeps your eyeballs on the screen for longer than they already are.

So as we search for a sliver of good news in 2022, you can say two minor miracles have occurred: CSNY agreed on something, and CD sales are up. Hey, almost two years into the pandemic, at least that’s a start.

And a reminder that no matter how cliched it sounds, we really are living in strange times.

Postscript:

To no one’s real surprise, by March 2024, Young and CSNY had returned their music to Spotify. The reason: Rogan’s podcast is no longer exclusive to the service, but available on all platforms.

"Other music services [including] Apple, Amazon, Qobuz, Tidal... have started serving the same disinformation podcast I had opposed at Spotify," Young wrote on his website. "Because I cannot leave all those services like I did Spotify, because my music would have no streaming outlet to music lovers at all, I have returned."

Kevin Alexander, in his always excellent “On Repeat” Substack, summed it up perfectly in one of his columns.

Hindsight and armchair quarterbacking are easy to do, but from this observer’s perch, Young’s mistake was a strategy that amounted to attacking free speech. Please do not “at” me about free speech not existing on private platforms/the internet. I know, and I get it. But in this context, it matters. Young wanted to silence Rogan and was willing to sacrifice a lot of access to his catalog (and money) to do it. Where he went wrong was his overestimation of the market to agree and/or follow him— listeners and musicians alike.

It's an easy shot to take when you’re in the rarefied air he occupies — less so for up-and-coming artists. That doesn't even take into account America’s addiction to the culture wars.

Sadly it’s an addiction that shows no signs of abating soon.