Neil Young has threatened one of the biggest music streaming platforms in the world, telling Spotify to choose between his music or Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Neil Young announced in a now-deleted open letter on his website that he asked his manager and record label to remove his music from Spotify unless the streaming service dumped Joe Rogan.
That would have been a tough call for Spotify. Although we would back Neil all the way, Joe Rogan has almost double the listenership with an estimated 11 million listeners per episode.
Neil wrote that he was making these wild demands because The Joe Rogan Experience spreads misinformation about COVID vaccines.
“Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy,’ he wrote, according to numerous media reports. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
He makes a pretty decent point, one that many others including a group of scientists have publicly made.
Only a few weeks ago, 270 professors, doctors and healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to Spotify to express their concern with the “false and societally harmful assertions” made by Joe Rogan.
Now, it’s worth mentioning, yes of course Joe Rogan is a comedian and comedians make jokes about all kinds of crazy shit. The only issue here is this particular meat-head-gone-funny-man isn’t interviewing comedians and joking around. Plus, the podcast just isn’t very funny.
Neil’s letter continued: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”
While the bull shit Rogan spouts off is mostly annoying stoner chat, millions of people are dying to hear it and he only recently signed a $100 million deal with Spotify to give them exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience.
It seems like Neil’s threat has lost wind as the letter was deleted and for now, his music remains on Spotify.
It doesn’t take away from his attempt to fight the good fight. COVID misinformation or not, it’s a boring podcast.
