Spotify is a hero, having brought new money to artists and labels when the music industry had hit rock bottom in the mid-2010s. But at its worst, it’s a bad actor in a worse industry that historically treats artists miserably. It’s certainly how I listen to music: streaming Daniel Tiger songs in the car to get my kids to stop fighting making a playlist of Mavis Staples solo songs after reading her biography even playing my own music, over and over, trying to remember how a song goes while prepping for a rare mid-pandemic show.Īt its best, Spotify is an elegant tool-a conduit between artist and art and listener. More and more, Spotify is the way people hear what I make. And ultimately, the dispute between Young and Spotify over Rogan’s show says much more about what is happening to the music business than it does about free expression or artistic integrity.Ĭonor Friedersdorf: What’s the purpose of boycotting Joe Rogan? The rights of speech and association are, as always, constrained by contracts and commerce-in the arts as much as in the tech world. He’d signed away those rights to his label, which is part of Warner Music Group, and he had to ask Warner to let him leave Spotify as a personal favor. But, notably, Young himself did not in fact have the legal right to leave.
He has the moral right to get off Spotify, the largest music-streaming service, to protest Rogan’s comments about COVID-19 vaccines. I’m out of here.” I support Young’s stance. I assumed he was just telling the company, “I don’t need this. When Neil Young said he’d take his music off Spotify if it kept streaming the podcaster Joe Rogan, I doubted he was trying to deplatform Rogan.
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