A growing number of artists are taking sides in the Neil Young-Joe Rogan controversy on Spotify, including Central New York musician Steven Page.
Young, 76, pulled his music from the platform in protest over Rogan’s podcast on Spotify, which has been accused of spreading Covid misinformation to millions of listeners. Hundreds of medical experts signed a letter urging Spotify to address the issue last month after “The Joe Rogan Experience” interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who was banned from Twitter for promoting “numerous baseless claims” about vaccines.
Young said Spotify, which has a $100 million deal with Rogan, is complicit and said the music streaming service could either have his music or Rogan’s podcast - “not both.” Spotify agreed to remove Young’s music from the service last week.
Page, the former Barenaked Ladies singer who lives in Manlius, N.Y., released a short song over the weekend siding with Young.
“If you’ve gotta choose between spoken and sung / If you’ve gotta choose between your teeth and your tongue / If you’ve gotta choose between Rogan and Young / Choose Young,” Page sings on “Choose Young.”
The song, available for download on Bandcamp, also references vaccine hesitancy, a banned Holocaust graphic novel, and political division in both the U.S. and Canada. An accompanying music video adds some humor, mixing in photos of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kid Rock and Paris Hilton.
“Oh, if you look back now at how far we’ve come / And you’re asking how things could have gotten so dumb / We used to clap every night for the nurses on the landing / Now we doxx ‘em and we stalk ‘em and shout ‘Let’s Go Brandon,’” he continues, flashing a picture of Canadian actor Jason Priestley as Brandon on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
A rep for Page wouldn’t say if he would be removing his music from Spotify, but The Associated Press notes that many artists are unable to make those decisions because record companies typically control their music.
The protest has slowly gained more supporters, including singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell; Nils Lofgren, a guitarist who’s performed with Bruce Springsteen and Young’s band Crazy Horse; and Graham Nash, Young’s former bandmate in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Solo works by Young, Mitchell, Lofgren and Nash average more than 10.5 million monthly listeners combined, according to Spotify.
Podcaster Brene Brown also said she was halting new podcasts and Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo launched his own streaming service, “Weezify,” featuring thousands of demo recordings from his career.
Grammy-winning singer India.Arie, best known for the 2001 hit “Video,” said she was pulling her music from Spotify because of Rogan’s comments on race. Rogan, a former actor and host of “Fear Factor,” was criticized last week after saying “the term Black is weird,” even for “someone who is, like, 100 percent African from the darkest place where they are not wearing any clothes all day and they have developed all of that melanin to protect themselves from the sun.”
“Neil Young opened a door that I must walk through,” India.Arie said.
Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming service, with 524 million subscriptions in the second quarter of 2021 — more than double that of second-place Apple Music, according to the AP. However, Spotify is not always popular with artists, who criticize the platform for paying less in royalties than other services like Apple and Tidal; rock band Eve 6 said it gets .003 cents per stream and 100% of the money goes to Sony, which is a part owner of Spotify.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said Sunday that the company would add advisories to podcasts that discuss Covid, but would not remove episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
“Personally, there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly,” Ek said. “It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”
Rogan also responded to the criticism, saying he tries to book guests with “differing opinions,” noting that he recently had conversations about Covid with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the chief medical correspondent for CNN; Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board; and Dr. Peter Hotez from the Baylor College of Medicine.
“I’m not trying to promote misinformation, I’m not trying to be controversial,” Rogan said Sunday. “I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than to just talk to people.”
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