Okay

January 26, 2022 Longrider Civil Liberties, misanthropy, Political 16

There is only one answer to someone who engages in this type of blackmail.

Neil Young has demanded that Spotify removes his music, due to vaccine misinformation spread by podcaster Joe Rogan on the streaming service.

“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” wrote the star in a letter to his management and record label.

Rogan has been criticised for airing vaccine-sceptical views, and promoting debunked claims about treating Covid-19 with the anti-parasite drug ivermectin.

I’ve listened to some of Joe Rogan’s stuff. He interviews people and engages them in conversation. He allows them to speak. It is then up to the listener to make what they wish of it – and, yes, ivermectin does have anti-viral qualities, so it is Young who is wrong here. But even so, it really doesn’t matter whether the views being aired are accurate or not – until you have heard them, you cannot make a judgement. That’s how free speech works. It’s how Rogan works.

Spotify, which paid $100m for rights to the podcast in 2020, is yet to comment.

The only appropriate comment here is “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Clearly Young doesn’t believe in rocking in the free world, because he doesn’t believe in a free world to start with.

16 Comments

  2. Neil Young’s music has gone downhill for 20 years now. He had become a sanctimonious, whingeing arsehole. Even more so since he abandoned Pegi Young and went with Darryl Hannah.

  3. Supposed to be anti-establishment stick it to the man pro individual liberty, it was just a front, he’s none of that, just a commie totalitarian Stalin Hitler wannabe.

  5. Neil Young is free to hold and express any opinion he likes. He’s also completely free to threaten an embargo against Spotify using his music. He’s an idiot if he does so, but he’s still free to do so. As for Spotify, since they’ve spent $100 million buying the rights to broadcast Joe Rogan, rather than spending that money on Neil Young, I’m guessing they see more revenue coming forth from the former rather than the latter. I imagine their response will be somewhere along the lines of “Okay Neil, we’ll take your entire catalog off our playlist”. Nothing more.

    I’m presuming that the income Neil gets from Spotify is pretty negligible or at least he sees greater value arising from his virtue signalling than that occasional Spotify cheque.

    His call I guess. He’s still a twat though.

    • He’s still a twat though.

      Quite. If he feels that strongly, just do it. The rest of us don’t need to know. Most of us really couldn’t give a damn.

  6. As an explanation for non availability of content I hope that Spotify paste Kneel Young’s protest on the page that used to be his, with a link to Joe Rogan’s

  7. He’s deleted it. Seriously, there’s just a blank page on his website now.

    Possibly because someone has reminded him that, contra John Galt, he isn’t free to threaten an embargo of anybody using the songs wot he wrote, on account of him selling them a year ago.

    So, yeah… twat.

  9. Been a singer/songwriter my entire life and had great respect for the likes of Neil Young… can’t imagine listening to him again without thinking ‘He turned out to be a twat’. Sad really.
    “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done”
    Ah well, I’ll always love Janis 🙂

  10. I read a post on Michael Malice’s locals page that Neil Young earns Spotify $6 million a year, Rogan brings in $200 million so I don’t imagine Spotify are losing any sleep over this.

  11. Lynyrd Skynrd told us we don’t need Neil Young around in ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ after
    Young had sung the disrespectful ‘Southern Man’. He apologised thirty years later though which made it perfectly ok……..

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