Neil Young has been in the spotlight as of recently due to his request to have his music stripped from Spotify due to misinformation on the Covid-19 vaccine coming from one of its most popular podcasters, Joe Rogan. Although Spotify was willing to remove the music with no problem, after a spur of famous allies joined his side and Spotify’s market cap fell by almost 2 billion dollars, the company decided to put out some new rules on fake news. However, Neil Young has been giving Spotify the business for a long time.
As a classic musician, Young’s biggest issue with Spotify has always been its shoddy audio quality. Most music used to be recorded in analog and although there was less compartmentalization and a smaller library, the sound quality was spectacular in comparison to the digitally recorded music we have now. Neil Young had developed Pono, a music service that was dedicated to giving back the rich studio sound of a music recording by focussing on uncompressed digital audio. Although the company fell under, Neil Young and Amazon Music have had a fruitful relationship expanding on his dream of returning to high-quality music formats.
The unfortunate truth when it comes to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music is that so much of the original music file losses data because they use Lossy compression techniques that delete much of the content of the files in order for consumers to more conveniently access it. Spotify is also guilty of other music crimes such as how much it pays its artists per stream and the type of mining going on in that site that make them a good chunk of its money while leaving underground artists in the dust. Neil Young was right to leave when he did.
Sources:
Pono (digital music service) – Wikipedia
Neil Young quit Spotify because of Joe Rogan. These artists followed his lead (yahoo.com)
The Dark Side Of Spotify – YouTube
What Spotify is doing here is extremely dangerous. Joe Rogan is the most listened podcast on Spotify with roughly 11 million active listeners. That is a lot of people listen to Joe Rogan spread fake news about the pandemic that could ultimately costs a lot of lives. The pandemic is a serious thing and it is extremely important for us to take the necessary steps in slowing down or stopping the spread of the virus. With people like Joe Rogan out here spreading fake news only hurts the steps were have taken.
Spotify’s decision on keeping the podcast over removing its content was probably a business decision. Those 11 million subscribers that listen to his podcast can only listen to it on Spotify. While artists like Young can be listened to on Apple Music, Amazon Music, and more. The podcast is generating a lot of money for Spotify for them to give it up and artists like Young are probably not generating as much money as it is worth for them to choose Young over Rogan. Spotify is also known to pay the artist way less than their peers.
https://www.inquirer.com/business/why-did-spotify-choose-joe-rogan-over-neil-young-hint-its-not-music-company-20220129.html
I think Spotify’s decision regarding this protest by Neil Young is telling. During recent years the platform has been slowly transitioning from a platform about music, to a platform about audio: audiobooks, podcasts, etc. I experience this every day when I use the app and they try to push podcasts on me in the front page. Spotify already had issues with underpaying artists and this makes it clear. where there interests lie, in making as much money as possible.
Spotify has tried to address the concerns over the controversy with Joe Rogan by labeling podcasts that contain COVID information (or misinformation) however this decision is not enough. Luckily more artists are joining Young in the protest of the platform. This controversy solidifies the fact that the Music Platform cares more about the profitable podcasts than the integrity of the Music and paying artists a fair amount.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/01/spotify-neil-young-joe-rogan/621396/