Neil Young pulls his music from Spotify after his ultimatum regarding Joe Rogan and ‘fake information about vaccines’

A bit off-topic, but I finally cancelled my Spotify Premium after several years of having it, and mentioned their continued support of Joe Rogan in my reason why. Anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives?

Is there anything indicating that it's Spotify removing it, or is it Neil Young (or his label/representatives) doing it? Spotify's statement sounds like it's Young doing the removals, and I assume any artist can remove their own music whenever they want, barring some kind of special deal with Spotify.

Joni Mitchell has joined Young and requested her music to be removed from Spotify.

I am certainly no fan of Joe Rogan, and where I disagree with vaccine policies, it is as a result of my views being more pro-vaccine. However, there are unsettling facets here, and I think it is important not to be blinded to those by the sides involved here, and the dangers of the misinformation being protested.

As a minor note, I would point out with some dismay that Young is using this opportunity to promote his own rather pseudoscientific views on audio. While not at the same level as anti-vaccination and pro-ivermectin claims, his views are part of an industry built around using pseudoscientific explanations to sell expensive products despite objective, blinded tests repeatedly showing that the products don't offer any perceptible benefit to audio quality (or even decrease fidelity). This is also an industry which he has participated in himself.

Joni Mitchell's explanation for her position has, I think, much better grounding, in addition to being based around calls for specific actions on Spotify's part.

But more broadly, this serves as a reminder of the significant problems that streaming music poses with its lack of ownership and its mutability, especially in an era when there are moves for some music and podcasts to only be available over streaming platforms, rather than actually available for purchase. For example, a practical result of this situation for me is that, because of some political disagreements over an internet provocateur, the copy of Blue that was physically on my phone a few days ago, downloaded from Spotify, is mostly no longer there (interestingly, it would have continued to have been able to play this for some time if it had been offline, and thus not able to be remotely disabled; whether or not this would have been legal would, I suppose, depend on contract nuances that no reasonable user could be expected to know). Music libraries people had a few days ago are now different, because, of course, they didn't actually have them; they just had an easily-altered licence to be able to play them, one that could be removed at any time.

Yes, these actions are legal, and it would not make sense to force someone to do business with a particular company. But when combining the normalization of streaming over ownership and the normalization of these sorts of changes, problematic possibilities arise. Yes, a rightsholder might remove works because of serious health misinformation, or, as I'm sure will be argued by some in attacking this move, might remove works because of either a business's support or criticism of China. In those cases, you would presumably only have access to the works by changing streaming services. But a rightsholder, who would not necessarily be the artist, could well just remove works entirely, or even alter them. In a streaming-only world, the original works would cease to legally be available at all. At any point in the future, the lyrics and the sounds of music, the content of films, and the words of e-books could change or disappear, legally. In the past, changes to availability or content have been significantly softened by people actually owning copies of the original works. That would not be the case in a streaming-only world: there would be only the mutable access, changeable at any point in the future, and illegal copies. One could imagine a dystopian situation where an artist, bankrupted, has their works purchased by a hostile party, and thus, legally, their entire life's work erased from everyone's view entirely, or perhaps worse, altered to have an entirely opposite meaning. From a pure ominous capitalism standpoint, one might point out that Neil Young himself sold many of his rights to Hipgnosis, a company which appears to be founded for the specific purpose of exploiting the "unique market opportunity as technology disruption is changing the way music is consumed."

As Joe Rogan's podcast appears to be Spotify-only, absent contractual restrictions, I have to wonder whether he could himself change past episodes retroactively, removing any legal access to the originals. If someone were to do this, for example, to change past arguments in a podcast or book, or to seem prescient, you could of course call them out on it, but what would be your evidence? Your necessarily illegal copies? Fair use might be an argument, but would it have been fair use to store copies of all streaming-only works, in case someone decided to change them in the future? We are moving toward a world where works of the past are legally mutable. That is frightening. While bad 1984 references are a plague, with the incentive of convenience, we are moving toward a world where legal and technical arrangements create a favourable environment for Minitrue-like activities without the need for vast state power.

These protests are not that, not yet, particularly since they involve works that can be legally owned. But they may serve to normalize the idea that works of art may become unavailable at any time for political reasons.

A somewhat similar precariousness of continued access existed, in some ways, in the earlier days of radio, film and television, more for practical reasons. That so many works were lost is, I think, mostly viewed with regret, and the less-than-legal copying that incidentally preserved many others by chance viewed favourably. But we're moving toward a world where that type of loss of legal copies is a goal, not a byproduct of expensive and fragile storage. What will we need to thank pirates for, and what will we have lost, a century from now?

On my part, this is a bit of a punishment for falling to the convenience of streaming services. I have a copy of Blue, and many albums I listen to, that isn't just a licence. I'll likely switch back to relying on copies of music I own, perhaps streaming from my own servers.

Mildly interesting, looks like Neil sold some of his rights last year. I wonder what they'll have to say about this move.

I've been thinking about consolidating playlists from various services for a while, and dropping Spotify was on my to-do list for this weekend. Since I'm finally giving up Google's evil empire and moving to Apple's evil empire, it's time to try Apple Music.

Of course, Soundiiz is showing that Spotify's API is erroring out today.