Neil Young Returning to Spotify After Joe Rogan Boycott

Zoe G Phillips
·2 min read
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Neil Young’s music will return to Spotify, the singer announced Tuesday.

Young’s music was initially pulled from the music streamer in early 2022 after the artist published (and later took down) an open letter telling Spotify to address the vaccine misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, or lose access to his catalog.

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The “Harvest Moon” singer’s return to Spotify was not because of a reversal on his original stance, Young clarified in a statement, but because the other major streaming services have now begun presenting Rogan’s podcast as a result of the podcaster’s new deal announced this month.

Young said in January 2022 that Spotify represented 60 percent of his streaming revenue globally, which amounted to “a huge loss for [his] record company to absorb,” but that he moved forward with removing his music because he “could not continue to support Spotify’s life-threatening misinformation to the music loving public.”

On Tuesday, Young said that his decision to return “comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify.”

He continued, “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.”

The singer went on to say his return comes with sincere hopes that Spotify’s “low res” sound quality will improve, “and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it.”

He added that his catalog is also available in “high-res” on Qobuz and Tidal.

At the time of Young’s initial departure, Spotify noted that “we have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

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