Spotify Sides With Joe Rogan In Neil Young Feud, #DropSpotify Starts Trending

A few weeks ago, hundreds of doctors, nurses, medical professionals, scientists, and teachers signed an open letter asking Spotify to stop “mass-misinformation events” like the podcast hosted by Joe Rogan.

In the letter, medical professionals asked Spotify to “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform” and pointed to Rogan’s history of “broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic” on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

However, Spotify refused to provide a comment on the open letter, which prompted singer Neil Young to step in.

In an open letter to Spotify, Neil Young asked Spotify to step in and start policing COVID-19 misinformation at its platform.

“Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID,” he began.

“I realized I could not continue to support Spotify’s life-threatening misinformation to the music-loving public,” he continued. He said that pulling his music was a “huge loss” for his record company to absorb, but he felt the move was necessary.

“I truly want to thank the many, many people who have reached out to me thanking me for taking this position — people who are health professionals on the front lines, people who have lost loved ones to COVID or who are worried for their own children and families,” he continued. “I have never felt so much love coming from so many.”

Spotify considered their options and decided to remove Neil Young’s music from the streaming service. In a statement made to the Hollywood Reporter, a spokesperson said that they are “in the process” of removing Young’s music from its platform.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” they said. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.”

“We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic,” they continued. “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

However, it does not seem likely. If anything, Young is encouraging other artists to stand in solidarity against Spotify.

“I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the Spotify platform and stop supporting Spotify’s deadly misinformation about COVID,” he wrote in his letter.

Shortly after Spotify decided to drop Neil Young, plenty of users decided to drop Spotify as #DropSpotify, #DeleteSpotify, #CancelSpotify, and numerous variations of the hashtag began trending on Thursday afternoon.