The rift between legendary Canadian-American songwriter Neil Young and streaming service Spotify started two days ago. Young took to his website to post a now-deleted message saying that he takes issue with Spotify hosting The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, accusing them of "spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe this disinformation spread by them." He then added that "I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both."
Spotify paid Rogan somewhere in the realm of $100 million for the exclusive rights to the podcast in 2020, so despite a valiant (and respectable) move by Young, it didn't seem likely that Spotify would remove the podcast. Which is exactly what happened. Spotify removed Young in favor of Rogan and issued a statement saying they "regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify."
"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."
Now Disturbed vocalist David Draiman has weighed in on the issue via Twitter, praising Spotify and saying that the right to free speech must be preserved.
"@eldsjal I applaud you and @Spotify for making the RIGHT call, preserving #FreeSpeech and not capitulating to the mob. I may not agree with everything @joerogan or his guests say, but they're entitled to have the forum to say it."
As of now, Young's music is off Spotify save for a few albums that maybe he doesn't have the rights to.
