Music streaming service Spotify is in the process of removing Canadian singer Neil Young’s music from its library. The development comes after the 76-year-old rock star demanded that Spotify remove his work if it chooses to give comedian-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan a platform.
Young has accused Rogan of spreading misleading information about the Covid-19 vaccines. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” the singer stated in a now-deleted letter on his website.
Following the ultimatum, Spotify on Wednesday expressed their regret over Young’s decision and “hoped to welcome him back soon”.
What has Neil Young said?
The ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ artiste whose career spans over decades on Tuesday wrote an open letter alleging that “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
His allegations were specifically against one of Spotify’s most popular podcasts, The Joe Rogan Experience, which has come under the scanner for spreading misinformation about the pandemic several times.
While the letter, ‘A Message to Spotify’ has now been removed from Young’s site, on Wednesday the singer again hit out against the streaming service, stating, “Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about Covid.”
In his letter, ‘Spotify: In the Name of Truth’, Young expressed concerns over the “impressionable” listeners, who are being exposed to “unfactual, misleading and false Covid information on Spotify.”
Young, who garners over 6 million monthly listeners on the platform, thanked his record company Warner Brothers – Reprise Records, for supporting his decision, despite losses to their streaming income. He said, “Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world, almost every record I have ever released is available — my life’s music — a huge loss for my record company to absorb. Yet my friends at Warner Brothers Reprise stood with me, recognizing the threat the Covid misinformation on Spotify posed to the world – particularly for our young people who think everything they hear on Spotify is true.”
“Lies being sold for money,” Young said, adding that he hoped other artistes and record companies will follow suit and “stop supporting Spotify’s deadly misinformation about Covid”.
Joe Rogan and history of misleading claims around Covid-19
This isn’t the first time Joe Rogan has been called out for misinformation around the Covid-19 pandemic.
In September last year, Rogan announced he had tested positive for Covid-19 and was using deworming medicine, ivermectin, to treat his symptoms. However, he was widely criticised for promoting the drug, which remains an unproven cure for coronavirus. The FDA has even warned that the drug can be dangerous in large doses.
Explained: Why is Joe Rogan drawing flak for using ivermectin to treat Covid-19?
Most recently, a group of 270 scientists and health experts wrote an open letter to Spotify to implement a misinformation policy. The letter, dated January 10, alluded to Rogan’s episode with a certain Dr Robert Malone, who claims to have played a key role in the creation of mRNA vaccines, and was barred from Twitter for violating its misinformation policy around Covid-19. A known anti-vaxxer, he also participated in a recent demonstration in Washington DC against vaccine mandates. In the podcast, Malone promulgated an absurd, unfounded claim, that a “mass-formation psychosis” had “hypnotized” a third of the population to get vaccines. He went on to compare the vaccine mandate in the US to policies of Nazi Germany, prompting backlash from several people.
Referring to the podcast, the letter states, “By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.”
Emphasising upon the podcast’s popularity, which garners an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, the letter placed responsibility on Spotify “to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
How has Spotify responded?
Following a formal request from Young’s record label, Spotify told the Wall Street Journal that his work will be removed from the platform. “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 since the start of the pandemic,” a spokesperson said.
The platform’s user guidelines prohibit material that “impersonates or misrepresents” the user’s affiliation with Spotify, or another person or entity, or “is otherwise fraudulent, false, deceptive, or misleading”.
The platform may also “remove” or “filter” content that infringes copyrights, promotes hate or is in violation of local laws or those laid down by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM).
An artiste, alternatively, can also issue a takedown request through their label or distributor. In case the artiste has neither, they can fill out an “infringement form”.
However, despite public criticism and several calls for action against Rogan, Spotify is yet to take action against the comedian.
In 2020, Rogan had announced through an Instagram post that his podcasts would be exclusively available on Spotify from September, in what WSJ called a “more than $100 million deal”. “It’s just a licensing deal, so Spotify won’t have any creative control over the show. They want me to just continue doing it the way I’m doing it right now,” Rogan had specified.
A month later, the streaming service had come under fire over Rogan inviting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been banned from Spotify, YouTube, Facebook and Apple for hateful content, as a guest on his show. However, Spotify’s CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek had reportedly responded at the time, “We want creators to create…It’s what they do best. We’re not looking to play a role in what they should say.”