Two years ago, Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify in response to Joe Rogan’s spreading anti-vaccine misinformation on his podcast, which was prominently featured on the platform. Young is back on Spotify although he’s not too thrilled about it.
“My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” Young said in a blog post Tuesday. “I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all, so I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it.”
It was at the end of 2021 when Rogan doubled down on spreading misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine with episodes featuring Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough, both of whom spent most of the pandemic spreading false info about the effects of the vaccine. Spotify did add warnings to episodes containing possible misinformation about covid but the company didn’t remove the controversial episodes. Rogan somewhat apologized for platforming anti-vaxxers at the time, but has since stepped up his conspiracy nonsense including sharing a fake story about a school providing litter boxes to “furry” students.
Aside from Rogan’s bullshit, Young also has not cared for anything less than the highest-quality audio for his music. Over the years he released his own “high resolution” portable music player, wrote a book about his mission to save high-quality music, and supported other music services that featured high-fidelity audio such as Qobuz and Tidal. Young wrote that he hopes Spotify creates a limited “Hi res tier” to provide the kind of audio quality he wants for his music.