So Young’s move might seem futile, like a man protesting the weather, or self-defeating, like a novelist not wanting to be on the same bookstore shelves as Tom Clancy. Rogan has been, for some years now, arguably the most influential podcaster on the planet.
In a statement, the company said that it wants “all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” asserted that it already removed “over 20,000 podcast episodes related to covid-19 since the start of the pandemic,” and expressed regrets about Young’s choice. The Joe Rogan Experience, a chat show about such subjects as health and society and mixed martial arts and aliens, remains available. On the Beach, “Old Man,” and most of the rest of Young’s gorgeous, warbling catalog as a lead artist is no longer available to Spotify’s 381 million users (though they can still gently blast Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). Spotify picked the podcaster over the musician.
( Rogan has said that he is “not an anti-vaxx person.”) Spotify, Young wrote, could “have Rogan or Young.
It alleged that Rogan had broadcast inaccuracies about COVID-19, including by hosting guests who plugged ivermectin as an effective treatment and by portraying vaccines as unnecessary for young people. Young’s letter was inspired by another letter, signed by 270 scientists, doctors, and other health professionals earlier in January. On Monday, Rolling Stone reported that the 76-year-old rock titan Neil Young sent a letter telling his management team and record label that Spotify would have to choose between hosting his music and hosting the hugely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. They’re doing something significant, and they’re doing something that can make a difference, simply by drawing attention to what Spotify has become: a content publisher whose main incentive to act responsibly will come from public scrutiny. Those questions are, in the case of musicians asking to pull their music from Spotify to protest vaccine misinformation, answerable. So why, the boycotter must be asked, draw the line here? We also live in a world in which individuals rarely ever wield more power than institutions. We live in a world of compromise and wickedness, built of systems guided not by virtue but by profit. The questions that arise in the face of any boycott effort-whether against an unethical retailer, a disgraced performer, or an exploitative employer-can be paralyzing.
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