Spotify Is Removing Neil Young Songs After He Complains of ‘Misinformation’ | Hacker News Reader

Spotify Is Removing Neil Young Songs After He Complains of ‘Misinformation’

nytimes.com

38 pointsjbegley20 comments

If you're in a position to 1) no longer care about sales and 2) you have a contract with your label that allows this level of platform control and 3) you have backup platforms, you can do this.

It may also be a case of Young not being happy with Spotify for many years and Rogan was a convenient justification .... or the straw that broke the camel's back.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tom-petty-neil...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-strea...

To be clear, this isn't Spotify censoring him or anything like that. He basically gave them the ultimatum "either remove Joe Rogan or remove me" and they (100% correctly, IMO) chose the latter.

I agree that Spotify made the correct decision for the situation they were in, but it's weird that Spotify didn't even attempt to reconcile to save face.

It's not weird, they learned last time dealing with their whiny employees over Rogan that even discussing it emboldened them and made it worse. Best to just tell them and Neil Young to kick rocks.

Thinking for future instances, it seems the best response. Why should an artist on a platform control the platform?

It’s difficult to reconcile when confronted with an ultimatum.

I'm confused. I read Neil Young recently sold significant stake in his music catalog to an investment company [1]. Doing something like this pretty much nullifies that investment. Perhaps the particulars of the deal he signed still allows him to do this, in which case the investment company made a bad deal.

If Spotify is just doing this as a courtesy, without full permission from all relevant stake holders, or specific contractual cover, then the investment company should be looking to sue both Neil Young and Spotify.

Surely I'm missing something.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/neil-young-sells-50percent-o...

Is the title deliberately trying to mislead? It's written to make it sound like he was punished for complaining, instead of leaving voluntarily in protest.

Difficult to see this as a punishment.

Young made the terms of his ultimatum. Spotify obliged and chose the option that suited them best.

Hearing people say "Hes still on Apple", yeah, so is the JRE podcast.

Its come to a point, one platform bans someone, you can get them on other platforms. Cancel culture isnt going to work (and thats a good thing!)

I'm an old school, turn the dial liberal.

Cancel culture isn’t some new phenom. Unless you mean cancel culture as in the hysteria over its apparent power yet almost every “victim” remains wealthy, famous, and powerful.

yeah, the hysteria, people are just banned, and hop on another platform. Even funding is going to be easy for banned people.

Not supporting the ban culture, just saying, its not as a powerful a tool that some people want it to be.

I can easily goto rumble to watch an artist banned off youtube, its not stopping me.

Not if you are rich and famous. On the other hand, if you are a plumber and someone on Twitter thinks you look racist, they can bombard your employer with a million followers and you are shit outa luck

Why any business/entertainer/politician would purposely alienate half of their potential customers/audience/voters is beyond understanding.

Is he removing his Youtube channel too? Guess Youtube has no misinformation!

https://www.youtube.com/neilyoung/videos

Way to miss the point. Spotify has a $100M deal with and actively promotes and supports Joe Rogan. Google/YouTube don't do that for Joe Rogan or any other channel spreading misinformation, nor does Apple.

(Yes, there are a lot of channels on YouTube that spread misinformation and are monetized/recommended, but YouTube didn't pay them $100M to maintain channel exclusivity.)

Not a Trump supporter but maybe Neil Young should have read what he signed.

I'm genuinely curious what you mean by this? Is there some nuance I'm missing here?

My take is that he was originally happy with his contract with Spotify, but he now disagrees with how their platform is handling a certain issue, so he is ending his contract with Spotify?

It doesn't matter what the contract says, if Spotify accedes to his request, which is what TFA says. The contract can't forbid him from asking, and they agreed.

They didn't have to, but it's probably best for them that they did. They want to be in a mutually-beneficial relationship with their artists. They don't want the artists to see them as somebody who will force them to do something they don't want to do. Artists already have a dicey relationship with them, since they keep such a large percentage of the revenue, and it's likely in their best interest not to aggravate it further.

The artist wanted out, and they parted ways. The revenue lost is much smaller than the amount they're paying Rogan, so presumably he's making far more for them. If it means that a ton of other artists are about to demand the same thing, then that's a bridge they'll have to cross, because they'd be in a no-win situation.

I doubt that will happen, in which case Spotify deftly avoided creating more ill-will. If it does happen, then it's an indicator that a huge number of people Spotify considers important disagree with their stance, and they'll have to think about it.

What does Trump have to do with this?

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