In a letter posted to his website, musician Neil Young told Spotify employees that they should leave the company, claiming that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek only cares about money after refusing to remove Joe Rogan’s podcast from the platform.
“To the musicians and creators in this world, I say this: You must be able to find a better place than Spotify to be the home of your art,” Young wrote. “To the workers at Spotify, I say Daniel Ek is your problem — not Joe Rogan. Ek pulls the strings. Get out of the place before it eats up your soul. The goals stated by Ek are about numbers — not art, not creativity.”
The letter follows Young’s decision to pull his music from the streaming service after accusing Joe Rogan of spreading “deadly misinformation” about Covid and vaccines on his podcast. Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify, saying “they can have Rogan or Young, not both,” but the streamer went with the former.
Since then, several artists have followed in Young’s footsteps and taken their music off the platform, or at least threatened to, while Rogan has been dealing with the fallout of the accusations leveled against him, including a recently circulated video showing the host using the N-word on his podcast.
So far, Spotify has announced that it will issue content warnings on Rogan’s videos, and has removed some 100 episodes of his podcast. However, the streamer has refused to part ways with Rogan, as he remains its No. 1 rated show via the $100 million exclusivity deal he signed with the platform in 2020.