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Comment by smorgusofborg | Hacker News Reader

Music is their international product. Choosing to support and subsidize talk radio from a position you could only get to with music is not a new plan. If I were a musician I would pull my work before everyone in talk radio wants equal time for their slime.

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Spotify didn't choose anything, Neil Young chose to "do justice with his own hands" and punish his listeners. Why didn't he use the 60% lost revenue to fight in Justice to get the misinformation out? Or fund creation of better content for Spotify and else?

Well, they sort of did choose though. I imagine Joe Rogan gets more listener hours than Neil Young does. It is also showing your values for the future if you remove Joe Rogan, whereas Neil Young is basically blackmailing them, in a pretty hysterical way.

I think on both issues Spotify wins. Financially they probably do, and they get to show they don't bow to hysterical artists. That's a good thing in the long run.

Spotify committed to a deal they would have estimated around $1 per year per premium member on exclusive rights to JRE. Neil Young may want to influence their choices in how they mediate social/political discourse that doesn't change the discussion musicians should be having about whether they are the equivalent of films on Netflix. Sidelined for original/exclusive content that inherently has to have a social/political mediation run by Spotify.

I already have.

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