OPINION:
If only from a free-publicity standpoint, folk-rock singer Neil Young’s attack on the free speech rights of comedian-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan was a stroke of genius.
After two decades of obscurity and irrelevance, during which time his past 19 single records releases have failed to register any significant chart action, Mr. Young has been in the news more or less nonstop for more than a week now.
If you still managed to miss the story, Mr. Young objected to Mr. Rogan’s spreading of what the former regards as “misinformation” about COVID-19 vaccines on his podcast. On Jan. 25, he presented an ultimatum to the Spotify streaming service, which distributes both his music and Mr. Rogan’s podcasts, essentially stipulating: “One of us has got to go.”
“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” the septuagenarian Canada-born rocker — whose heyday was in the 1970s and 1980s as one-fourth of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young — wrote in an open letter to his manager and to Warner Records, his label.
He asked them to have Spotify remove his music from the streaming service and urged other artists to follow his lead. Several other artists also long in the tooth and past their prime — among them his fellow CSNY bandmates, Barry Manilow and Joni Mitchell — said they would, but as of this writing, still haven’t done so.
After Spotify rightly refused to cave to the ultimatum to drop what is by far its most popular podcast, Warner Records formally requested that it remove Mr. Young’s music from among its offerings.
So, for now, at least, 1971’s “Heart of Gold,” Mr. Young’s biggest solo hit single, and other songs in his catalog are unavailable on Spotify, which reportedly accounted for 60% of all streaming of his music.
“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” a Spotify spokesman said in a Jan. 26 statement that called to mind Motel 6’s slogan “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
It was hardly surprising, however, that Spotify stuck with Mr. Rogan over Mr. Young, given that, according to The Wall Street Journal, the streaming service in 2020 struck a $100 million deal to be the exclusive distributor of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
As such, the 76-year-old folk-rocker’s “him or me” gambit was a miscalculation, though not as serious as actor Jussie Smollett’s equally publicity-seeking “hate-crime” hoax. But it’s still a cautionary tale of the “Be careful what you wish for” variety.
“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,” a spokesman for Spotify told The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
And in a Jan. 30 post on Spotify’s website, Chief Executive Daniel Ek noted, “We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19.” (Paging Tipper Gore and Susan Baker.)
That same day, however, Rogan in a video message reminded us that “many of the things that we thought of as ‘misinformation’ just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.” That truism was apparently lost on Mr. Young.
Just as an aside, even though Mr. Young has yanked his music from Spotify and won’t be collecting royalty payments from it, his fans needn’t worry about where his next meal is coming from: His net worth is estimated by Celebritynetworth.com at $200 million.
In other words, it was a small price for him to pay for all that virtue-signaling and headline-grabbing.
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