I'm sure Mr Young knew that this would be the end result and that it would be a hit to his pocketbook in taking the stand he did. I respect his integrity for doing so and hope other artists do the same.
Seems unlikely to me, this plausibly increases the value more than it decreases the value. A ton of press, driving people to support him, driving direct sales (e.g. https://neilyoungarchives.com/account?screen=plans). Increases the potential audience from "people who like his music" to "people who dislike Joe Rogan (or like his music)". Etc.
It could turn out poorly for him, but even from a purely business perspective it's not an obviously bad decision.
> Young, 76, said Spotify accounted for 60% of the streaming of his music to listeners around the world. The removal is "a huge loss for my record company to absorb," he said.
So, at least according to Young, the move is "a huge loss".
Turns out it was a Southern Man from Alabama who told him it was he, the Old Man, who had the heart of gold, and he was just searching for it in the wrong place. After all, it was After the Gold Rush and he had it all along.
He doesn’t want his music to be on a platform that is bankrolling someone who helps spread misinformation about vaccines. He suffered from Polio as a kid so this is something that means something on a personal level. That doesn’t seem that misguided to me.
And people have a right not to want to do business with a company that gave a hundred million dollars to someone producing misinformation.
Pretending this is a case of "spotify has an open platform that people can come speak on" is disingenuous, Spotify went out of their way and spent a ton of money to get the content he disapproves of on their platform.
(Comment aimed at a number of comments in this thread, including but not limited to the one I replied to)
It is incomprehensible for me to understand why people call this "principled". It is bullying in the words of President Obama - "That's not activism" [1]. If Neil wants to go and debate, he should show up on JRE and put his points forth.
Pulling one's business from sources you disagree with is 100% activism. Hell, it's the entire idea behind economic sanctions.
Going to talk to Joe Rogan isn't going to change anyone's mind, and is just providing him more attention and validating him as a 'platform', and thus perpetuating the problem.
I completely disagree. Activism is "Pull", not "Push". You need to put your points forth so as to rally people behind you, not beat them into submission.
This is just wokeness and cancel culture. It is top-down attempt for censorship, absolutely not activism.
What? How? Neil decided on his own to pull all his music. No one bullied him, no one called him out on twitter, etc. This isn't even a 'woke' issue. Neil decided he doesn't want to share a platform with disinformation spreaders, period.
> He wrote: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” [1]
So he wanted Joe Rogan removed. It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform". He insisted to remove Joe Rogan and threatened. That, in my book, ain't activism. It is bullying and exploiting his position in the industry.
I would be fine with Gandhi's approach towards boycotts (Salt March).
He didn't threaten and wait until they blinked; he wasn't trying to bully them. It was simply "I do not want to do business with you while you support and provide a platform to that guy".
His letter -specifically asked his music be removed-, with that explanation as to why.
Your book is wrong. No one just boycotts something without also explaining why to the thing being boycotted; that -might- achieve in the business or whatever folding, if enough people do it, but it won't lead to them changing. -That- would be "cancel culture"; we won't tell you what you can do to fix things, we're just going to complain that you did a thing, take our ball, and go home.
If the goal is to have them change, not to kill them, you have to tell them what they need to change.
That might be your personal definition of activism but it isn’t any accepted one.
Think about the anti-apartheid boycott movement against South Africa. Effectively they said “you can have Apartheid or you can have us buy your products”. Was that bullying? Was that exploiting a position? In what world was it not activism?
(as a side note the idea that an artist the likes of Neil Young even has the capability of bullying an company like Spotify is kind of funny in and of itself. The power dynamic between the two skews very, very heavily towards Spotify)
> It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform"
?!? That’s exactly what it was. According to the source you just posted that’s exactly what he did. He asked for his music to be removed, he did not issue an ultimatum. You’re quoting a rhetorical flourish he made and ignoring his actions.
thank you, engage in discussion before threatening to take your ball and go home. I think it's a little dramatic to call it bullying, but from the other side it looks pretty pathetic.
Joe Rogan has changed his stance on a lot of topics over the years. And his listeners aren't all idiots. Some people, despite what we occasionally see here, and what some believe by default, are still open to hear whatever good points might be made. Everyone has an agenda, but it's not always diametrically opposed to what's decent.
In the past when I listened to his show, he's said some stupid shit, but he's also admitted being wrong, and agreed to hold conversations with people he disliked or disagreed with, and was able to take something positive from it.
But sure, people can think he's harmful to society, but I think that kind of grandstanding/absolutism is pretty harmful in itself.
And as a final note I guess I just want to know why people are still here if they think discussion won't change the mind of Rogan, or his listenership, or other people in general. Is it that you think his listeners are uniquely stupid or malevolent? Is the idea that at a certain point, shouting opinions you like and hiding/distracting from opinions you don't is the only way?
Seriously. He's playing the culture war and identity politics game for his own benefit.
People who are downvoting you think it is "principled" to bully an open platform to moderate content and censor voices inconsistent with their own beliefs. Insanity.
Or he might have miscalculated his clout. Or indeed he may have just wanted to withdraw his catalogue as protest —if the latter, I think it’s misguided idea. Lots of musicians or artists can have diametric opinions to each other. It would be a disservice if they all started dictating who could be on the same service as them. What next, only allow streaming to people who hold my views on X, Y or Z?
Perhaps rather, if you pull up stakes every time someone else on the same platform announces they prefer grape jelly over strawberry (fucking animals!), pretty soon you're going to have N platforms for N people. Which I suppose is one possible Fediverse end-game: millions of individual platforms, federating and un-federating on a daily basis as people discover that someone they thought was cool actually voted for McCain in 2008.
Yes, if you carefully pare away every bit of context then it's true that nothing makes any sense.
In actual real life though it's not the difference between flavors of goddamn jelly, it's a serious moral concern for a lot of people.
Similarly it's not even a matter of forgiveness, or permanently staining someone's reputation over one action many years ago. These actions are ongoing and Rogan hasn't repented of them. If you believe they cause harm then you probably also believe they are currently causing ongoing harm. Which is a situation with different considerations than "someone did something bad a long time ago".
Nobody said anything about not allowing people to dictate who can distribute their art. Why must we take every "you shouldn't do this" statement to mean "you shouldn't be allowed to do this?"
> Moral rights are the rights of an artist to claim authorship in their work (IE: Right to attribution), object to offensive or derogatory treatment of the work, including destroying it.
> Though moral rights are a part of the Berne Convention, of which the U.S. is a signatory, the U.S. never fully implemented moral rights into their code. Instead, it passed the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) a law that extended moral rights to an extremely limited subset of visual works.
> As with fair use, this limited view on moral rights is another uniquely American element. Copyright holders in the EU enjoy much broader more rights. However, this is true in much of the rest of the world as well.
I don't think he miscalculated anything. We're all talking about it, and he publicly voted with his money. I doubt he believed Spotify would drop Rogan the next day or anything.
You're missing an important distinction. Spotify isn't just letting people stream Rogan, they're actively producing the content.
It surprises me that some people are talking about this as if Neil Young really thought he would win this fight. He’s been in the business for a while. I highly doubt he’d be naive enough to think Spotify would capitulate.
I guess he could have simply said he was removing his music because he disagreed with Spotify’s business practices, but this way, Spotify owns the action of removing his music from their service. NY didn’t walk out, Spotify chose Rogan over him.
How come? If I'm a proponent of cause A, and I participate in a group with a member who is anti-A, it's actually against my fundamental beliefs to be associated with that person. In this case, I can propose a solution to this: either I go, or he goes. I benefit from either result, since my beliefs in A are more important to me than the group (even if the group is still a very important part of my life).
If you want to be on Spotify's platform, you have to play by their rules, 100%. There is/was a number of artist whose work was not on Spotify for whatever reason.
They specifically said so in their statement: "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." [0]
They just won't touch their golden goose.
And remember, they're not just not removing Rogan's misinformation, they're producing and promoting it.
No, he hated Spotify already because they only had lower-quality versions of his music. He wanted to take his music off Spotify already, he just used the Joe Rogan issue as virtue signaling to cause a commotion.
Not sure of Spotify’s angle here. Artists don’t get enough money from Spotify to be loyal… could Lead to a mass exodus. I hope it does. Rogan gets to metaphorically drive drunk around town free from consequences it seems.
I think that angle is that until they reeled in JRE, they didn't really have anything original or exclusive. Virtually everything that people were listening to belonged to legacy record companies and artists. The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the biggest things going, and it's still young as a show, and they have it exclusively, so don't expect them to give it up for someone whose popularity peaked a long time ago (no disrespect to Neil Young).
Not a JR fan at all, but I suspect that Spotify knows very well who gets more listens between him and Neil Young. There may be ideology playing out on the edges of this thing, but Spotify's angle is 100% commercial.
This is good news for spotify. They haven't been able to make any inroads into podcasts, video segments despite penning deals worth millions of dollars with the likes of rogan.
They need series of controversies like this for people to even know that they now have content other than music. I haven't listened to rogan in years but now i am curious to give it a try.
There have always been protest moves like this, boycotts and so on. Everyone likes to pretend that protesting the views someone else has is this brand new snowflake era but that’s never been true.
Even if that once existed, this comment seems to exemplify what you wrote. The GP can freely voice their opposition to Spotify by moving to another service. They don’t seem offended to me, but rather resolute on a reasonable issue.
Not about absolutely every issue, but it does seem like there are more absolute redline divisive issues on which we can't be friends if we disagree. In fact, we not only can't be friends, we can't even get together to have a good argument, because that's offering you legitimacy and, after all, you're one of the bad people who aren't really even human at this point.
Harming one person in an isolated incident vs propagating misinformation which can result (has resulted) in many more than one death.
A comparison between the two is intellectually dishonest and it's hard to believe it's done in any way except bad-faith. Negligence in due diligence is also bad faith, mind you.
I don't understand how any Spotify user doesn't know they have content other than music, because you have to scroll pretty damn far down to get to anything music related. That's not even getting into the damn popups their app has trying to get you to listen to podcasts.
Like others here, I wish I could unsubscribe to podcasts. I hate how spotify pushes them in your face constantly.
I read that he actually doesn't own the rights to his music catalog any more, so technically Spotify could ignore his demands. Although if that's true, it's surprising the article doesn't mention it.
He sold a significant stake in it at least, reposting my comment from another thread:
I'm confused. I read Neil Young recently sold significant stake in his music catalog to an investment company [1]. Doing something like this pretty much nullifies that investment. Perhaps the particulars of the deal he signed still allows him to do this, in which case the investment company made a bad deal.
If Spotify is just doing this as a courtesy, without full permission from all relevant stake holders, or specific contractual cover, then the investment company should be looking to sue both Neil Young and Spotify.
This controversy will be over in a few months at worse. Spotify nullifies the damage by removing the music now, and the investment in the music would be a long term investment.
I predict within a year or so the content will be back. Quietly and with zero press…and it would not surprise me a bit of all parties involved have already agreed to a date.
> Perhaps the particulars of the deal he signed still allows him to do this, in which case the investment company made a bad deal.
Or they factored that into the price. The dude is known for political activism as much as he is for his music.
Any investor who did their due diligence knows that Neil Young is very opinionated about how his music is used. So if he negotiated for continued control over his music, the investors should have known he was going to cost them money.
I've been learning more about music rights this week (plug for the Taylor Swift episode of the Acquired podcast).
I think it depends on how much of his catalog he was the song write on? There seem to be some veto writes that songwriters get even if they have sold the rights to their master recordings.
Free, except for speech. It's sad how an aging rocker who used to celebrate nonconformity and questioning authority now becomes a finger waving old man telling everyone that there's only one truth.
He is free to voice his displeasure at sharing a platform with an ill-informed blowhard spouting dangerous bullshit out of every orifice. Spotify has no obligation to platform Rogan, but they choose to tie their flag to his mast, and I for one am happy I switched to a different platform.
There’s a difference between nonconformity and questioning authority and packaging those things for sale. Rebellion as a Service now sells you that feeling of fighting the man packaged up in easy to consume pieces.
I think people should recognize the distinction of an artist from their work and know their boundaries. If I said I enjoyed Alec Baldwin's "work" in his numerous film roles, I don't necessarily want to know what they are like in real life. In today's day and age that aspect is simply unavoidable.
How does paying a pile of money to get that podcast on their platform count as "percieved endorsement"? They literally gave him money to express his views.
Spotify literally gives artists money to stream their music. Some people will definitely perceive this as an overt endorsement of whatever viewpoints and values might be expressed in that rather broad variety of music; other might not.
Lots of singers and artists on Spotify are openly misogynistic and celebrate crimes. Are you suggesting that in the case of those artists Spotify doesn’t endorse those views, but in the specific case of Joe Rogan, they endorse his views?
Or should those artists with those vile views also be kicked off Spotify?
We don't even need to go there. Spotify likely includes a lot of religious music from all sorts of religions and denominations. Does this means that anyone who would reject the values and viewpoints of any single one of these religions (many of which contradict one another, which makes such rejection almost certain to occur) should quit Spotify?
I'm saying that the tech companies feel safe now, so the tech companies can support content creators who express increasingly right-wing views, as Spotify is doing by choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young.
I would say that the fact that Spotify and others feel comfortable letting people express their "right-wing view" is a good thing. The fact that you feel like it is awful is a little horrifying.
Joe Rogan is a staunch liberal. The fact you don’t know that speaks volumes about the legitimacy of your views on him. He supported Bernie Sanders in both elections.
*Per Neil Young's request. That part is important to add. They aren't punishing him or something.
Unrelated to this drama – I wish Spotify had a music-only (non-podcast) plan. It is annoying to think of the huge chunk of my monthly bill that is going to Rogan and a billion True Crime podcasts and lots of others that I absolutely don't use or care about. Meanwhile artists are getting paid peanuts.
I see a lot of takes that it would be censorship for Spotify to remove Joe Rogan's podcast. I get where those are coming from. However, Spotify isn't just hosting Joe Rogan's content, they actively advertise for it and try to get more people to listen to it. It seems like that is a much more editorial role and something worthy of criticizing them for.
Not really. They pay him a lot of money and want a return on investment. It's a great podcast with a lot of interesting guests. I see nothing wrong with Spotify advertising for it.
Kinda funny because I never even thought about listening to Rogan on Spotify till this whole stunt but I started listening to his show for the first time today. Its not my thing but I'm not sure I understand the uproar over it. Maybe I am missing something?
115 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadhttps://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/business/neil-young-rights-de...
It could turn out poorly for him, but even from a purely business perspective it's not an obviously bad decision.
So, at least according to Young, the move is "a huge loss".
Pretending this is a case of "spotify has an open platform that people can come speak on" is disingenuous, Spotify went out of their way and spent a ton of money to get the content he disapproves of on their platform.
(Comment aimed at a number of comments in this thread, including but not limited to the one I replied to)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
Going to talk to Joe Rogan isn't going to change anyone's mind, and is just providing him more attention and validating him as a 'platform', and thus perpetuating the problem.
This is just wokeness and cancel culture. It is top-down attempt for censorship, absolutely not activism.
What? How? Neil decided on his own to pull all his music. No one bullied him, no one called him out on twitter, etc. This isn't even a 'woke' issue. Neil decided he doesn't want to share a platform with disinformation spreaders, period.
So he wanted Joe Rogan removed. It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform". He insisted to remove Joe Rogan and threatened. That, in my book, ain't activism. It is bullying and exploiting his position in the industry.
I would be fine with Gandhi's approach towards boycotts (Salt March).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/business/neil-young-spoti...
His letter -specifically asked his music be removed-, with that explanation as to why.
Your book is wrong. No one just boycotts something without also explaining why to the thing being boycotted; that -might- achieve in the business or whatever folding, if enough people do it, but it won't lead to them changing. -That- would be "cancel culture"; we won't tell you what you can do to fix things, we're just going to complain that you did a thing, take our ball, and go home.
If the goal is to have them change, not to kill them, you have to tell them what they need to change.
Think about the anti-apartheid boycott movement against South Africa. Effectively they said “you can have Apartheid or you can have us buy your products”. Was that bullying? Was that exploiting a position? In what world was it not activism?
(as a side note the idea that an artist the likes of Neil Young even has the capability of bullying an company like Spotify is kind of funny in and of itself. The power dynamic between the two skews very, very heavily towards Spotify)
> It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform"
?!? That’s exactly what it was. According to the source you just posted that’s exactly what he did. He asked for his music to be removed, he did not issue an ultimatum. You’re quoting a rhetorical flourish he made and ignoring his actions.
He didn't "cancel" anyone. He opted out of a business relationship. Who do you think was canceled? Spotify? Rogan?
Joe Rogan has changed his stance on a lot of topics over the years. And his listeners aren't all idiots. Some people, despite what we occasionally see here, and what some believe by default, are still open to hear whatever good points might be made. Everyone has an agenda, but it's not always diametrically opposed to what's decent.
In the past when I listened to his show, he's said some stupid shit, but he's also admitted being wrong, and agreed to hold conversations with people he disliked or disagreed with, and was able to take something positive from it.
But sure, people can think he's harmful to society, but I think that kind of grandstanding/absolutism is pretty harmful in itself.
And as a final note I guess I just want to know why people are still here if they think discussion won't change the mind of Rogan, or his listenership, or other people in general. Is it that you think his listeners are uniquely stupid or malevolent? Is the idea that at a certain point, shouting opinions you like and hiding/distracting from opinions you don't is the only way?
People who are downvoting you think it is "principled" to bully an open platform to moderate content and censor voices inconsistent with their own beliefs. Insanity.
are we now moving onto "private citizens are not allowed to dictate where their content is served from?"
In actual real life though it's not the difference between flavors of goddamn jelly, it's a serious moral concern for a lot of people.
Similarly it's not even a matter of forgiveness, or permanently staining someone's reputation over one action many years ago. These actions are ongoing and Rogan hasn't repented of them. If you believe they cause harm then you probably also believe they are currently causing ongoing harm. Which is a situation with different considerations than "someone did something bad a long time ago".
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2020/08/04/10-ways-eu-copyri...
> 2: Moral Rights
> Moral rights are the rights of an artist to claim authorship in their work (IE: Right to attribution), object to offensive or derogatory treatment of the work, including destroying it.
> Though moral rights are a part of the Berne Convention, of which the U.S. is a signatory, the U.S. never fully implemented moral rights into their code. Instead, it passed the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) a law that extended moral rights to an extremely limited subset of visual works.
> As with fair use, this limited view on moral rights is another uniquely American element. Copyright holders in the EU enjoy much broader more rights. However, this is true in much of the rest of the world as well.
It wasn’t: “Hey Spotify, I want off your platform”
I was: “Hey Spotify! It’s me or him, you pick”
You're missing an important distinction. Spotify isn't just letting people stream Rogan, they're actively producing the content.
I guess he could have simply said he was removing his music because he disagreed with Spotify’s business practices, but this way, Spotify owns the action of removing his music from their service. NY didn’t walk out, Spotify chose Rogan over him.
Mr Rogan’s discussion may contain misinformation, but so can many other discussions.
Are we to have real-time “fact checkers checking?
What do we do retroactively to all the people who retrospectively said untruthful things?
Certainly very few politicians would be allowed to speak at all.
You either sell him water or me water, but I hate him, so I implore you not to sell us both water.
Twelve anti-vaxxers.
I doubt it. Spotify wasn't going to cave; we all know that. There are many influential artists whose work is/was not on Spotify for whatever reason.
The goal was to draw attention to the subject, and that was a success.
If he doesn't want to do business with an open platform, that's his problem. But I would not call that "integrity."
Got any source that lists artists censored or not able to put their stuff on spotify due to the speech content?
They just won't touch their golden goose.
And remember, they're not just not removing Rogan's misinformation, they're producing and promoting it.
[0]: https://deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-...
They need series of controversies like this for people to even know that they now have content other than music. I haven't listened to rogan in years but now i am curious to give it a try.
There have always been protest moves like this, boycotts and so on. Everyone likes to pretend that protesting the views someone else has is this brand new snowflake era but that’s never been true.
I guess you like contributing to actual crimes( vs thought crimes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_(service)#Controversy
A comparison between the two is intellectually dishonest and it's hard to believe it's done in any way except bad-faith. Negligence in due diligence is also bad faith, mind you.
what one person? Would you mind reading links in that wiki and identifying the people who were harmed. Hint: its not "one person" .
> Negligence in due diligence is also bad faith, mind you.
funny stuff.
Like others here, I wish I could unsubscribe to podcasts. I hate how spotify pushes them in your face constantly.
I'm confused. I read Neil Young recently sold significant stake in his music catalog to an investment company [1]. Doing something like this pretty much nullifies that investment. Perhaps the particulars of the deal he signed still allows him to do this, in which case the investment company made a bad deal.
If Spotify is just doing this as a courtesy, without full permission from all relevant stake holders, or specific contractual cover, then the investment company should be looking to sue both Neil Young and Spotify.
Surely I'm missing something.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/neil-young-sells-50percent-o...
This is the music business after all.
Or they factored that into the price. The dude is known for political activism as much as he is for his music.
Any investor who did their due diligence knows that Neil Young is very opinionated about how his music is used. So if he negotiated for continued control over his music, the investors should have known he was going to cost them money.
I think it depends on how much of his catalog he was the song write on? There seem to be some veto writes that songwriters get even if they have sold the rights to their master recordings.
Joe Rogan is an entertainer, not a rebel.
Plus he’s doing it for the money.
"There’s a difference between nonconformity and questioning authority and packaging those things for sale"
Yes. The things you're comparing have nothing to do with each other
Like explicit music lyrics, if you find it offensive, then don't listen, change the channel, etc.
> I sing the song because I love the man
> I know that some of you don't understand
> Milk blood to keep from running out
> I've seen the needle and the damage done
> A little part of it in everyone
> But every junkie's like a settin' sun
e.g., he "loves the man" for keeping heroin illegal, because he's seen how it ruins lives firsthand.
Or should those artists with those vile views also be kicked off Spotify?
Dave Rubin: He had Dave Rubin on before Proud Boys existed, and he criticized him for his views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG96VnIGXwo
Jordan Peterson: Please give a single comment where Jordan Peterson supports white supremacy
Dave Rubin: https://twitter.com/steinkobbe/status/1306743941459570696
Unrelated to this drama – I wish Spotify had a music-only (non-podcast) plan. It is annoying to think of the huge chunk of my monthly bill that is going to Rogan and a billion True Crime podcasts and lots of others that I absolutely don't use or care about. Meanwhile artists are getting paid peanuts.
I started downloading MP3s again. I am tired of postcasts and electron music players.
Lastfm works great to discover new music.
Spotify users: who's Neil Young?