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Credit: / Far Out / Alamy / Joe Rogan / Spotify / Annie Spratt
Has Neil Young taken his Spotify dispute a step too far?
Yesterday, Neil Young, the folk legend and 76-year-old multimillionaire, who recently sold half of his back catalogue to the transnational licensing company Hipgnosis for $150million, called for employees of Spotify to “find a good clean place to support with [their] monthly pay checks”. This was a comment that no doubt stuck in the craw of Michael from Customer Services as Young expressed concerns over his “soul” for his part in fuelling the misinformation on The Joe Rogan podcast.
A few weeks ago, the dispute began when Young rightfully raised concerns about the potentially harmful impact that unverified views espoused on the Spotify exclusive podcast might have. He nobly raised awareness of the issue and faced up to a 60% loss in streaming revenue by removing his music from the platform.
In the aftermath, he also called for others to join him in solidarity and, indeed, many followed in his footsteps. Yesterday, he bolstered that call, proclaiming: “To the musicians and creators in the world, I say this: You must be able to find a better place than Spotify to be the home of your art. Get out of that place before it eats up your soul. The only goals stated by [Spotify CEO Daniel] Ek are about numbers – not art, not creativity.”
One of the alternatives that Young has offered up for creatives in the interim since the debate first began is Amazon Music. He promoted the rival streaming giant on his social media platforms. Amazon, as we all know, is a company renowned for its stellar treatment of employees, of course, this comes with the recent exception of six fatalities caused by preventing workers from vacating their warehouse during a tornado, and a thousand other asterisks.
Perhaps one of the other widely used musical repositories that artists could turn to is YouTube. Young himself utilises the platform to host hundreds of official videos. Unfortunately, he might be surprised to learn that the Joe Rogan Experience also has an official channel on that platform, alongside videos posted by other users bearing titles calling Covid-19 a hoax and whole channels dedicated to conspiracies, albeit not all as harmful as virus misinformation.
In the interim, since the dispute was first sparked, Spotify have announced their own set of pioneering measures. “We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about Covid-19,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced.
Continuing: “This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated Covid-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics, and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources. This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days.”
As it happens, this warning system is the first of its kind by any major podcast platform. Do Spotify deserve credit for this? Not really, the measure represents little more than the widely ignored parental advisory warnings of old. However, it isn’t all that condemnable either, it merely represents the predicament that both creatives like Young and online hosting services face these days as the internet has become less of an information highway and more of an information wild west as the libertarian march continues without any governing body.
The crux of this usually comes down to money. Spotify currently pays out 70% of all its income in royalties to musicians, or more notably, their labels. Joe Rogan’s podcast, however, is exclusive to them and requires no overheads, thus, they have a vested interest to protect their $100million multi-year investment. However, equally when Young extolls, “Join me as I move my money away from the damage causers or you will unintentionally be one of them,” he surely must read the room and realise he is one of the privileged few in a position to do so.
While this does not mean that the rich and powerful can’t lead from the front and do the right thing, it will not sit right with many that the vast swathe of people that Spotify employs have also been condemned by him; especially considering that the misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast is usually countered on the show be certified medical professionals which he has on frequently as guests. In fact, it seems patently obvious that much of the debate has completely bypassed the actual content in question.
In short, there are many things Spotify can be condemned for, misinformation is just one of them, and these issues deserve to be raised in the face of creating a more responsible and egalitarian industry. However, this criticism should not extend to the thousands employed by the streaming giant who are merely trying to get by.
While Young may well claim that his words have been misconstrued on this matter, he should have more empathy when it comes to addressing the “souls” and “pay checks” of the workers, particularly considering that he once made hugely condemnable and misinformed comments himself in the past. As he wrongfully opined in a 1985 Melody Maker interview regarding the AIDS epidemic: “It is scary. You go to a supermarket and you see a f*ggot behind the fuckin’ cash register, you don’t want him to handle your potatoes.”
Albeit Young would no doubt now retract these remarks and one wrong certainly does not justify another when it comes to misinformation; it does, however, highlight the need to look at things holistically, with caution and most importantly with a sense of empathy and understanding.
Misinformation is dangerous and it has most certainly cost lives during the course of the pandemic, but considering that many within the hierarchy of Spotify might have also suffered losses during this time, it is hardly empathetic to condemn them with a blanket criticism when they have nothing to do with the decision making process.
The pandemic itself has illuminated the need for greater collectivism and solidarity—this need is most certainly not represented by a millionaire calling for the voiceless to face up to unemployment and ply their trades elsewhere. Especially considering that Spotify is a million miles away from being the frontrunner when it comes to questionable companies even despite all the issues, such as royalties and algorithmically skewed biases, that have seemingly gone amiss amid the cynical debate.
In the interest of balance, you can read Neil Young’s full statement in question by clicking here.
