Last Wednesday, Spotify removed Neil Young’s music from it’s streaming site. The move was in response to Young’s demand to pull his music because he said he didn’t want to share a platform with Joe Rogan because of Rogan’s spreading of COVID misinformation on his widely followed podcast, which airs on Spotify.
That was Wednesday. By Friday, Spotify’s stock price was down $25 a share, representing about a $2.1 billion loss in market capitalization. Apparently that made Spotify nervous, so Sunday the CEO, Daniel Ek, announced that Spotify would
add a content warning to episodes talking about Covid-19 and link to coronavirus podcasts from reputable news sources going forward. Under Spotify’s new policy, Covid-19 misinformation will only be banned under four circumstances—saying that approved vaccines are intended to kill people, claiming Covid-19 is not real, encouraging people to intentionally get Covid-19 or promoting the consumption of bleach for medical treatment.
Spotify is also tagging content that discusses COVID and is creating a new “hub for data-driven facts and up-to-date information” from the health and scientific communities, which I suppose that’s something, but you’d think encouraging people to drink urine as a cure might be bannable, too? I mean really, Spotify.
Then last night, Joe Rogan sort of apologized along the lines of “Sorry I offended you.” He did say he’d try to do better, but he also said please don’t think he’s a dick because he doesn’t like being thought of as a dick. At least, that’s how this part of what he said struck me.
“I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view,” Rogan said. “I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so we can all figure out what’s going on and not just about Covid, about everything, about health, about fitness, wellness, the state of the world itself.”
This isn’t the first time Rogan has had to apologize for spreading misinformation. In September, 2020, he said that “left-wing people” had been arrested for starting forest fires in California, and that fact hadn’t “been widely reported.” The reason it hadn’t been widely reported was because it wasn’t true, and Rogan later “apologized profusely” for saying it, according to Forbes. I would link the article about it, but Forbes is being a pain and keeps kicking me off its site. You can easily Google it if you want to read the article.
Anyway, thanks to Neil Young for raising this to a level where Spotify had to take notice and actually do something, no matter how wimpy. Thanks also to Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, Brene Brown, and any other musicians I’ve omitted that followed his lead. It’s a fine example of using whatever platform is available to you to stand up against liars and bullies and try to make the world a better place. Which Young and Mitchell have been doing for decades, btw. This is just their latest round, and they have my gratitude and admiration.