Spotify has agreed to pull Neil Young’s work from streaming via its platform, according to a statement from a Spotify spokesperson.
As Pitchfork reports, Young shared an open letter via his website earlier this week, in which he accused Spotify of "spreading fake information about vaccines" by hosting Joe Rogan’s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. Despite a Spotify spokesperson’s statement that Young’s music would be removed from the platform, some of his albums are still available there at the time of writing.
In the statement, the spokesperson said: "We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon."
Young removed his original open letter from his website a day after publishing it, but followed it up today with a new post, in which he wrote: "Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID." He also thanked his record label and management team for working to remove his music from the streaming platform.
In his latest letter, Young wrote: "I first learned of this problem by reading that 200-plus doctors had joined forces, taking on the dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in Spotify programming. Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on Spotify are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.
"All my music is available on Spotify, being sold to these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on Spotify, and people like me are supporting Spotify by presenting my music there. I realised I could not continue to support Spotify life threatening misinformation to the music loving public."
Read Young’s full letter here.
