One year on: why did Neil Young’s Spotify boycott fail to catch on?
In January 2022, Neil Young called for all of his music to be pulled from Spotify. His motivation was a matter of principle. The singer-songwriter was outraged by the streaming platform’s support of The Joe Rogan Experience, which was responsible for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccination. Over the next few weeks, more artists decided to pull their catalogues, including members of Crosby, Stills & Nash and Joni Mitchell.
One year on, and the boycott is already a distant memory. Spotify remains the most popular music streaming service, and many of the artists who were originally part of the Boycott have re-added their catalogues. So, why did the movement not catch on?
The first thing worth mentioning is that the Boycott was the product of what appeared to be a personal feud. The most successful boycotts, protests and movements tend to be in reaction to a problem shared by large numbers of people who have previously not been granted an opportunity to speak, the #metoo movement being a recent example.
Though misinformation is certainly a problem, few people regard it as a tangible threat in the same way as predatory sexual behaviour. Young has frequently railed against big business, and such behaviour has become part of his image as a countercultural icon. As a result, to the outsider, his attack on Spotify looked more like a David and Goliath scenario than a mass uprising.
That Young was already an established artist when the boycott took place is also significant. Throughout his career, the singer-songwriter has cheerily scuppered his own chances of commercial success for the sake of artistic integrity. In doing so during a period when sticking it to the man was big business, Young made himself very successful indeed, earning a devoted following who have continued buying his records ever since. In this sense, his decision to abandon Spotify was incredibly low-risk. It’s not like Young’s presence on the streaming platform was keeping his memory alive, and nobody was going to suddenly forget about him overnight. The same is true of the other artists who joined the boycott.
For Young and his comrades in arms, Spotify was never essential. The same cannot be said for emerging and alternative artists who rely on the streaming service for exposure. When you think about it, it was very bold of Young to ask his fellow artists, many of whom can’t even afford to go on tour because of mounting touring costs, to cut ties with a service that provides them with a small but reliable source of income. That’s not to mention the financial pressures on the people actually listening to the music.
Vinyl might sound better than “pixilated” digital music formats, but it’s also pretty bloody expensive – and made of oil, which, in case you hadn’t heard, is in rather short supply, ramping up costs. One wonders if Young’s failure to take into account the affordability of Spotify may also have harmed his cause.
While there is certainly a sense of admirable combativeness from Young’s persistence in rallying against the authority of capitalism, that position is harder to maintain when producing records from one’s own studio on a mammoth plot of land. But, more importantly, Young’s problems with Spotify pale in comparison to the mire of inequality, poverty and violence huge swathes of the world are experiencing today.
