Well, it looks like Neil Young has learned the hard way that Spotify don’t need him around anyhow.
In a superb outburst of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, the geriatric hippy loudmouth recently issued an ultimatum to the music streaming giant: It’s me or Joe Rogan.
Spotify users hankering for Heart of Gold sure are going to miss Neil.
Neil Young has asked Spotify to remove all his music from its streaming platform in protest over vaccine conspiracy theories that have been broadcast by its most popular podcaster.
In a letter posted on his website, Young said he was asking his management to take “all of my music off their platform” in response to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
The Australian
Be careful what you ask for, Neil.
”Spotify has responded, honoring their $100 million deal with Joe Rogan, writing “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users.” The company continued to write in their statement, “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
Jambands
Which is a polite way of saying, “Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out”.
After all, what did he think Spotify were going to do? Dump the most popular podcaster in the world, whose audience easily outnumbers many mainstream media outlets, and whom they just paid a lazy $100 million to get? Or bow to the geriatric hippy who hasn’t had a hit in decades.
Now, I’ll admit to being a fan of Neil Young’s music. Even the stuff most people hate, like Trans (which I’m listening to as I write). I’ll also admit that (especially as a fellow loud-mouthed greybeard) I kind of admire Young’s long-demonstrated penchant for shooting his gob off. Especially when he dares what no-one else in the entertainment industry will, and say things he knows he’s not supposed to say, such as defending nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, though, this time he’s just parroting the groupthink — as well as violating the free speech rights the hippy generation demanded for themselves.
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young said, according to Rolling Stone.
Apparently the irony of ranting about fake information to Rolling Stone is lost on poor ol’ Neil. This is, remember, the publication that completely fabricated “a rape on campus”. Its reliability isn’t any better when it comes to the pandemic: last year, the magazine also published an utterly false story about imaginary ivermectin overdoses.
And that’s probably the problem: Grandpappy Neil actually believes what he reads in the papers.
Episode 1757, which was posted on New Year’s Eve, featured Robert Malone, who has been thrown off Twitter for coronavirus misinformation. In their conversation, Malone suggested that coronavirus vaccines were unsafe and that millions of people were being hypnotised by Anthony Fauci, US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. He said a similar phenomenon had occurred in Nazi Germany.
This is, of course, a complete misrepresentation (to put it mildly).
What Malone actually said was that the rush-job to get vaccines onto the market meant that the safety of the vaccines had not been adequately demonstrated — which should be the standard scientific and medical practise.
As for Malone’s brief flirtation with the dubious “mass formation psychosis theory”, as I pointed out in my own article on the matter, while Malone’s description of affairs in Nazi Germany were blatantly historically wrong (although commonly held) and that “mass formation psychosis” is about as reliable as any other sociological “theory” (which is to say that it’s garbage), that was only a small segment of the three-hour talk.
Given also that it’s outside Malone’s field, he should at least be forgiven — as so many ideologically-correct scientists routinely are — for being wrong about something he obviously isn’t expert in.
Speaking of non-experts, and on the topic of media lies:
More than 200 scientists, health experts and hospital staff signed an open letter to Spotify, warning that the company was allowing people on its platform to “damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data driven guidance offered by medical professionals”.
The Australian
As it happens, just 87 of the “doctors” are actual medical doctors. Many were PhDs (and thus “doctors”, but not medical practitioners), but many more were teachers, social workers, engineers and even podcasters.
Malone, by contrast, is indeed a medical doctor, with decades of experience in virology and immunology.
So, who’s really spreading misinformation, Neil?
It ain’t Joe Rogan or Robert Malone. No, go back to playing music and yelling at clouds, you silly old coot.