It’s me or Joe Rogan, Neil Young tells Spotify

In a message shared on his official website, Neil Young has demanded that Spotify remove all his music from its platform, citing its partnership with Joe Rogan, whose podcast Young believes is spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.

The now-deleted letter was addressed to his management team and read: “Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible. I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”

“Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule,” the statement continued, according to Variety. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Joe Rogan’s podcast has attracted a lot of criticism for his stance on the pandemic and vaccines. Last month, 270 doctors, physicians, and science educators signed an open letter demanding Spotify take down Rogan’s content. 

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“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter reads. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

As for Young, his music is still currently available on the platform, but this isn’t the first time he has threatened to pull his catalog from the streaming service. Several years ago Young wanted to remove all of his music from streaming platforms because he felt the audio quality provided was too low. Ultimately he relented, acknowledging that platforms like Spotify are where people get their songs, and saying that, at the end of the day, “music is music.”