Earlier this week, Neil Young posted an open letter to his website urging his record label and management to scrub his music from Spotify, accusing the platform of “spreading fake information about vaccines” by hosting The Joe Rogan Experience. Now, Spotify has agreed to pull Young’s work from streaming, according to a statement from a Spotify spokesperson. As of this writing, some of Young’s albums remain on Spotify. Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Neil Young for comment.
“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” the spokesperson stated. “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.”
Elsewhere in his open letter, Young accused Spotify of “potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.” He also wrote: “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.” Rogan’s podcast has been the source of much controversy regarding COVID-19 misinformation, specifically on the topic of vaccines.
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