Rock singer Neil Young recently sent an open letter to Spotify, demanding that they remove Joe Rogan from the platform, or they remove his music. It was an obvious choice considering the reach and popularity of Rogan, and Young's music was quickly gone. On Friday he wrote another letter, which in part claimed that "I support free speech" and "I have never been in favor of censorship."
The letter is mostly a whiny complaint against Spotify that at one point uses an expletive about the platform. "When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better," he opened his letter with, going on to lament that "SPOTIFY then sells you the downgraded music."
It's worth noting that Spotify does offer free services that have fewer features.
"AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC, and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shi**y degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art for. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist's music at its quality and charges you like it was the real thing," Young also charges.
It appears that Young may be seeking to change his focus on why he had his music removed from Spotify.
The particularly noteworthy part of Young's letter comes towards the end, and is in original emphasis:
I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have any music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.
As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else.
Young's letter did not specify if he stands with those "front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others" but who have chosen not to get vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus.
While the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month struck down President Joe Biden's vaccine or testing mandate for private businesses with 100 or more employees, by a vote of 5-4, vaccine requirements for healthcare workers at facilities receiving federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid remain in place.
For all of Young's complaints against Spotify, Tech Times indicated last week that "Spotify Reigns as Most Used Music Streaming Platform in 2021."
"The Joe Rogan Experience," which Rogan took exclusively to Spotify in 2020 for $100 million, earns approximately 11 million listeners per episode.
There had been chatter that Barry Manilow was pulling his music as well, the singer himself addressed the rumor over Twitter. Joni Mitchell, also a singer, on Saturday morning had her music removed from Spotify as well, in solidarity with Young.
Glenn Greenwald predicts bigger names will follow.
Obviously, Spotify is not going to get rid of Rogan over Neil Young or Joni Mitchell. But for US liberalism, censorship is a virtual religion now, so they will start pressuring bigger names to do this. They try to make any platform toxic which allows dissent from liberal pieties.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 29, 2022