Neil Young has threatened to remove his entire catalogue from Spotify in light of Joe Rogan’s recent podcast that featured COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
The ‘Old Man’ singer has penned an open letter to Spotify, in which he says the streaming service “can have (Joe) Rogan or Young. Not both”.
The Grammy award winning musician posted a now deleted open letter on his website.
“Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible,” the letter began. “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.”
He added: “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule. 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.”
At the time of writing, both Neil Young’s music catalogue and Joe Rogan’s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, still appear on the streaming service.
In a December episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan interviewed scientist Dr. Robert Malone, who was critical of mRNA vaccines, and he said that hospitals are financially incentivized to falsely COVID -19 diagnose deaths.
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The episode was met with much backlash, with medical and scientific experts slamming both Rogan and Spotify for spreading COVID misinformation.
A group of 270 scientists, professors and medical professionals shared an open letter with Spotify on New Years Eve requesting for the streaming giant to implement a misinformation policy.
“By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals,” the letter reads.
“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter stated. “Though Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” it added.
Rogan is the most listened to podcast on Spotify, and the comedian and podcaster signed a $100 million deal in May 2022 with the streaming platform that allowed them exclusive rights to his podcasts.
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Watch ‘Harvest Moon’ by Neil Young:
