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Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music after falling out over Joe Rogan
- almost_usual 5y ago
- blastonico 5y ago> “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.” Hmmm, I like Neil Young, but he's not too relevant to cause such impact.
- MaxMoney 5y ago
- fngllkj 5y ago
- version_five 5y agoI think this is an appropriate way to deal with any ultimatum. It's a much weaker form of "don't negotiate with terrorists". It's in no organizations to embolden people into bullying them into something. I wish we saw more of this. (As a hedge, most times when I see something principled like this happen, there is some small blowback and instead of letting it pass, the organization capitulates and reverses their decision. We'll see if that happens here)
- fngllkj 5y ago
- pseudalopex 5y agoThe article said it was Young's decision.
- xupybd 5y agoYes but he offered them a choice to remove Rogan or himself. Spotify chose not to remove Rogan.
- pseudalopex 5y agoHe made the choice. Or assumed what they would choose at least.[1] [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-demands-spotify-remove-music-vaccine-disinformation-1290020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-dem...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chiefalchemist 5y agoBut it started with Young saying, "Rogan goes or I go." That landed on deaf ears. So Young "decided" to leave.
- pseudalopex 5y agoIt started with Young saying "I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform".[1] [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-demands-spotify-remove-music-vaccine-disinformation-1290020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/neil-young-dem...
- breakyerself 5y agoI hope more musicians join him.
- version_five 5y agoThanks for letting me know
- breakyerself 5y agoYou're welcome.
- ralusek 5y agoI'd love to have to switch between music streaming platforms based off of which musicians disagree with the doctors Joe Rogan has on his podcast.
- breakyerself 5y agoYeah or Rogan could stop having purveyors of misinformation on his show. That would also work.
- ralusek 5y agoSo my options are switching between streaming platforms or having Rogan's podcast censored down to the guests you and Neil Young like? I don't love my options.
- dehrmann 5y agoI agree that it's the right move. It's Spotify telling artists and content creators that it won't be a part of either their political statements or grudges. Imagine a streaming platform where Eminem tells the platform to remove Machine Gun Kelly or else he's removing his content. And once one person pulls it off, a lot of people will try to do the same.
- vinay427 5y ago> It's Spotify telling artists and content creators that it won't be a part of either their political statements or grudges. I realize I'm pulling a quote out of context from your comment, itself a specific reply to another comment. That being said: This doesn't seem to address what I understand to be the issue. I would draw a distinction between political statements based on differences of opinion/perspective and statements that target misinformation. If one believes that the latter is at play, this distinction is relevant, and the idea is somewhat codified (with some variations) in the free speech, hate speech, and libel laws of many jurisdictions for reasons that seem justifiable to me. More specifically, I would have a problem with Spotify engaging in specific political disputes between artists on their platform. I wouldn't have a problem with Spotify adapting their terms to target misinformation on their platform, assuming this was done in good faith and enforced reasonably.
- paulpauper 5y agoI guess this is one way to get media attention. Probably the increased media coverage from this will help boost sales from other sources to negate loss of Spotify revenue.
- chiefalchemist 5y agoHow much of a loss can Young leaving be? Nothing against ol' Neil but his relevance is long gone. He's a great artist. He has a right to his opinion. But in terms of "cultural juice" he's heading in to sunset.
- pseudalopex 5y agoI think they meant the revenue Young will lose.
- chiefalchemist 5y agoOhhhh. Yeah, I think you're right. Thanks.
- MattRix 5y agoWhy is it hard to imagine that he didn’t do this for financial reasons at all? I doubt the increased media coverage will actually make him much money.
- xupybd 5y agoI don't understand what motivates a move like this. Is he really that indignant about Joe's views on COVID that he can't sell on the same platform. If so why? Because he cares about public health initiatives that much?
- paulpauper 5y agoIt seems like the ultimate form of virtue signaling or a cry for attention. If that is what he wanted, he succeeded. It is all over the news today. Everywhere. Have to commend Spotify for not backing down despite the heap of criticism they have gotten over the past year about Rogan.
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoAnti-vaccine misinformation is killing hundreds of thousands of people. It is not an unimportant issue.
- funOtter 5y agoWorry about yourself.
- mint2 5y agoFirst off, We live in a society not a free for all dystopia. Second, that poster could be one of the 7 million people in America with immune issues or one of the probably 10x that cares about one of their friends or fsmily who has those health issues, but even if not, people being vaccinated helps keep health care costs down for all and could save the posters life if they got in a car accident tomorrow the local ER may already be overwhelmed due to the unvaxxed. So anyway, thanks for that meaningful addition to the comments.
- mns 5y ago> First off, We live in a society not a free for all dystopia. Well, looking at the past two years, I'm not so sure about that. Locking up the whole world in their apartments, fining people for being on the street, locking up playgrounds, banning outside exercise or limiting your "outside" time to 1 hour or allowing you to go no further than 1-3 miles from your home sounds pretty dystopian to me. My mom died of cancer after being ignored for 1 and a half year (in the EU she couldn't get a CT scan for 6 months because the hospital staff didn't want to disinfect the machine after each use) and I was able to see her only in the last 2 weeks of her life after being forced to stay in quarantine for 10 days, even if I had negative PCR tests before travelling, so yeah, let's all pretend we care about people and health, and not about people like you feeling superior and better than everyone else.
- cmusfan 5y agoIs this so he can get out of his contract and sell his library to Sony like several big artists recently did? Edit: Looks like he already sold it off recently. Wonder why he has any say on this anymore.
- oversocialized 5y agoWell I heard Mister Young sing about her Well I heard ol' Neil put her down Well I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow
- tjr225 5y agoI saw cotton and I saw black Tall white mansions and little shacks Southern man, when will you pay them back? I heard screamin' and bullwhips cracking How long? How long? How?
- vaxskeptic 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mythrwy 5y agoThe "graves" didn't actually have bodies in them it turns out. I suppose this doesn't contradict your point about it being a "narrative" though.
- lokar 5y agoYoung later said he regretted the jab: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_Alabama https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_Alabama
- verdverm 5y agoI will be curious to see if NY will stay off of Spotify forever, while JRE is there, or if once covid is not the main news story, that NY is back on Spotify. Alexa, set a reminder for 3 years from now...
- smoldesu 5y agoHis catalog is owned by Warner Brothers, I give you... *checks watch* 6 months.
- drzel 5y agoCan anyone recommend the best alternative to Spotify that still has Neil Young? Ideally with a linux client and the ability to control one device from another device's linked client. I listen to quite a bit of Neil Young and not-so-much Joe Rogan.
- evv555 5y agopirate bay
- datavirtue 5y agoOr you could buy your own copy for a $1, throw it on Plex, and eventually pass it down.
- joshSzep 5y agoI've been playing with YouTube music and got to say it's been a great alternative to Spotify for now. Secretly afraid of Google killing it off though
- adhoc_slime 5y agoI can not relate. To me, their ui is frustrating, the reccomendations aren't great, and when in offline mode you cannot search for an album, you must use a playlist or your entire library. Very much considering spotify or any alternative
- breakyerself 5y agoI use Amazon music because I like to stream music over my Alexa while showering. Listened to Old Man in the shower this morning.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fumar 5y agoI enjoy Apple Music as it works on my Apple Watch without an iPhone. It holds both uploaded music and streaming additions to my library. I previously used Google Play Music which was an MVP its whole life cycle. The switch to Apple Music was rather easy. On the Beach is one of my favorite Young albums and its on AM.
- glogla 5y agoI didn't know they were actively standing behind Rogan - I kind of expected they signed him on before he went completely off the deep end and are now just keeping up the status quo. I will go cancel my Spotify subscription now.
- syshum 5y agoIt is ironic you believe he went "off the deep end" after signing with Spotify, because many JRE fans believe he has gone soft since signing. Personally I don't think anything has changed. He is the same, long form open dialog on topics he is interested it, we need more Joe Rogan's, not less
- glogla 5y agoThat might be rose glasses on my end. I remember most of the interviews being Joe bringing in someone to talk about interesting topic (neuroscience, nutrition, mushrooms, astronomy) while Joe sat there saying "woooooo, thats craaaaaazy". That changed when he started interviewing various alt-right talking heads. But yeah, I might be misremembering things.
- syshum 5y agoYou have to ask yourself, did Joe move politically or did you? because in my experience I have seen the "Alt-Right" be expanded to include a whole host of people that are not what "alt-right" was it was originally described, instead anyone that disagrees with any position of the authoritarian left is now "alt right" also anyone that expresses any support for any person previously called "alt-right" is now themselves "alt-right" by their mere limited association or support.. i could go to COVID as it provides many examples of this, but lets take another hot button issue of the day, Abortion. I am pro-choice 90's style democrat on the topic, I support the idea of "Safe legal and Rare" but if I say the new law out of NJ may be going to far, or that maybe we should not out right celebrate abortions instead viewing it as something tragic that ultimately may be needed and certainly should be outside of the purview of government regulation I am viewed as "Alt-right bigot" for my very centrist and rational position
- smoldesu 5y agoIs anybody really all that surprised by this, though? Setting Spotify's deal with JRE aside, removing the show from the platform would set an unenforceable precedent for the majority of podcasts. If we just start banning people for saying things that go against the status quo, what would we even be left with? A handful of NPR shows minus The Moth Radio Hour? Joe Rogan is a hilariously bad entertainer and an even worse podcast host, but how could this have gone any other way? If Spotify caved, everyone would have gotten the worst of both worlds: people who don't care would have a diminished Spotify experience while every other artist gets a piece of the virtue-signalling pie, and disenfranchised podcast hosts would just go back to RSS and keep distributing their content to the exact same people.
- dools 5y agoThere's a big difference between "saying things that go against the status quo" and spreading obvious and dangerous misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories.
- dham 5y agoI don't understand this whole misinformation thing that's appeared in the last couple of years. I've seen a ton of documentaries and listened to music that spreads misinformation. Why is doing it on social media different? I'm asking an honest question. Why can't people just listen to what they want?
- notservile 5y ago
- dools 5y agoYes misinformation is nothing new. The type of bullshit I see now being promoted now on social media is no different from the bullshit that used to appear in Weekly World News or Nexus Magazine in the 90s. Hell in "So I Married an Axe Murderer" Mike Myers even does a bit about how his mother reads batshit crazy conspiracy theories and refers to them as "news". Fringe batshit crazy conspiracy theories have always been out there and have always been a space where the far left overlaps with the far right[1]. The problem is that now we have an entire class of politican, forming an increasingly powerful faction in global politics, whose pitch is based on misinformation and it's reinforced by a media network that is increasingly divorced from any sort of regulation or oversight, has the veneer of "news" and the trust that goes with it, but which is just a bunch of sociopaths in equal measures crazy, greedy and stupid, amplifying each other into authenticity. Social media has enabled this, it would have been impossible to do otherwise. Yes the writers of Nexus Magazine could publish something and sell it in the newsagent alongside Time Magazine and National Geographic, but what Social Media does is the equivalent of running Nexus Magazine articles inside Time Magazine, or worse it just lets a whole bunch of people who can imitate rational, educated thought create content that too many people fail to differentiate from actual scholarly or journalistic work. The politicians lend credibility to the shitposters, and the shitposters do the same back. Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Tim Pool, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Ted Cruz, Judge Janine, Laura Ingraham, Peta Credlin, Rowan Dean, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, George Christiansen, Paul Murray, Rita Pahani, Miranda Devine, Adam Creighton, you name, it, they're all the fucking same, all over the world (I've only cited US and Australia because that's what I'm most familiar with but these same cutouts appear throughout global media and politics). None of them are "telling it like it is", they're just a bunch of big greedy stinking fucking liars, or they're too dumb or too crazy to know that what they're saying is wildly inaccurate. The unifying thread of this dangerous and insidious political movement is libertarianism, which has pitched itself as anti-authoritarian but which is ultimately the most authoritarian form of government imagineable (essentially feudalism) because "liberty" and "freedom from regulation" mean very, very different things when you're super rich than they do when you're super poor. The rebellion against "regulation" has turned into a rebellion against "authority" which has in turn lead to a rebellion against ALL expertise, to the point where football players think they should be able to debunk scientists. [1] https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far-right-overlap-d1a6ddcd7be4 https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far...
- Graffur 5y agoIt's the only sane decision to be made. I wonder if Neil Young actually listened to the podcast episode. I really doubt it.
- mike_hock 5y agoI ain't no fan of Rogan no more, he's gone off the deep end. But yeah, it's the only sane decision not to let one content creator strong arm you into booting other content creators he doesn't like. I don't care if you're right or wrong (because he is right, Rogan is misinformation these days), but you don't get to control who gets to say what.
- paulcole 5y ago> you don't get to control who gets to say what. Of course you do! If you have more leverage and power than the person you’re trying to silence, then you get to silence them. See: Nearly every cop who killed an innocent person up until about the last 5 years.
- mike_hock 5y ago> If you have more leverage and power than the person you’re trying to silence, then you get to silence them. Yeah. And it turned out Young didn't have more leverage in this case.
- paulcole 5y agoYes, but my point is clearly that if Young had more leverage, Rogan would be off Spotify right now.
- encryptluks2 5y agoWhy doesn't Young show how much money he is losing by this. I am willing to guess it is $2k/mo. if that.
- RileyJames 5y agoHarvest is still one of my favourite albums of all time. Good on Neil for taking a stand. He doesn’t need the money, and he’s never been enamoured by Spotify. I have no love for Rogan. But I don’t necessarily think Spotify should remove Rogan. But if Neil doesn’t like the way Spotify operates, removing his music is putting his money where his mouth is in terms of protest, and I respect that.
- exodust 5y agoHe had the option to simply leave Spotify and state the reasons why. But instead he chose to make threats about leaving unless someone else was cancelled. When that didn't work, he moaned about Spotify's poor audio quality on his way out the door, adding something about young people believing everything they hear. I can't see anything respectable in that coarse of action.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoDid he publish an open letter on his website and then delete it? I wonder why.
- xref 5y agoDid he or didn’t he? Which he is he? Why would a blog post matter?
- jerzyt 5y agoKudos to Spotify, whether it's a money decision, or a decision to stand up to a has-been entertainer. They stood up to a bully.
- senectus1 5y agoThis has interesting parallels to religion, or at least the arguments that evangelicals like to use in the main stream these days.
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
- cpncrunch 5y agoNot really. NY was standing up to Spotify's bad decision to broadcast dangerous misinformation, and he was making a protest to try to get them to see sense. Good for him! I hope he sticks to his principles.
- 0xy 5y agoNote that "dangerous misinformation" changes entirely based on what the orthodoxy is currently promoting. Particularly, CNN/MSNBC/NBC/AP all promoted the "masks don't work" lie promoted by the CDC at the start of the pandemic, which likely directly led to deaths. But if CNN slaughters some grandparents with CDC-backed lies it's water under the bridge compared to Joe Rogan, right?
- mike_hock 5y agoWell, I heard Mr. Young sing about her. Well, I heard old Neil put her down. Well, I hope Neil Young will remember. A southern man don't need him around anyhow. Edit: Downvoted for singing a classic, smh
- justinator 5y agoYoung was actually a fan of Lynyrd Skynyrd, https://groovyhistory.com/content/123649/ef5e0e961b40d5108f2e08f8177a6fee.jpg https://groovyhistory.com/content/123649/ef5e0e961b40d5108f2...
- dools 5y ago
- niij 5y agoOr just don't listen to them if you don't like them. There's millions of other podcasts/songs that are worth listening to.
- dools 5y agoExcept that they're creating a political movement that's about as dystopian as one could possibly imagine by convincing people to vote against their economic interests and hand massive power to the already wealthy and corrupt. Libertarianism is the means by with capital captures labour politically, and will be the ruin of the planet.
- niij 5y agoYou're welcome to your own political beliefs. Personally, I'm happy to live in a pluralistic society. Trying to silence everyone you disagree with seems truly dystopian, but I agree with your distaste for those people. None of them are libertarian; they're extremely socially conservative conspiracy theorists. I can't imagine being in Australia during COVID and arguing against ideologies of personal freedom, though.
- PickledHotdog 5y agoThankfully most Australians aren't as self-centred as all that
- dools 5y agoThat's because you've been mislead into thinking that something bad is happening in Australia, because of libertarian propaganda propagated by those aforementioned new media dickheads. They are absolutely libertarians, that's what unites them.
- 5y ago
- throwawaysea 5y agoI would like to think this is because Spotify grew a spine and is defending free speech. But I doubt it, given they've removed many of Joe Rogan's episodes. This is probably just a cold hard business decision, since the number of people seeking Neil Young content is likely very low by comparison.
- niij 5y ago> We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users," Spotify said > we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic Doesn't sound like they're principled on free speech.
- floxy 5y agoI wonder if Neil would think about being a guest on Joe's show. I've never listened to Joe Rogan, and I don't know if I've ever heard a Neil Young song, but that seems like it might be the principled thing to do, to explain your position to Joe's audience. And I wonder if Joe would have him on? Would people just expect Joe to talk over Neil or otherwise be rude to him? If that was the expectation, then of course I wouldn't expect Neil to participate.
- mrleinad 5y agoNo, because no matter the outcome, that would be feeding into JR pockets.
- newsbinator 5y agoWhat if JR donated twice the predicted proceeds (or x million dollars, whichever is higher) to the charity of Neil Young's choice? My guess is it wouldn't matter: Neil Young is not prepared to spend 3 hours discussing ideas calmly and politely with somebody who listens carefully and challenges him.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoIf you’ve seen Neil Young comment on anything on TV… Rogan would eat him alive. I actually hate it when I agree with NY on a topic (quite often) because he makes my side look like the looney toon side.
- approxim8ion 5y agoWhen's the last time Rogan has eaten anyone alive though? No matter how incredulous or inconsistent their views, he seems quite satisfied to have a good time chatting them up about nothing in particular.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoRogan will defend himself; the CNN Dr. looked like an ass on the show. But in fairness, even then, Rogan attacked his employer and not the individual.
- dugditches 5y agoHaven't heard anyone or news mention the fact Young tried to start his own music service a while back. And that his catalogue was a selling point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)
- AaronNewcomer 5y agoDiscontinued April 2017 Must not've been that great of a selling point
- major505 5y agoIt was expensive compared to spotify and the file sizes where way larger, since the files where in loseless format, something that is very niche, since most people cant tell the diference beetween a good quality mp3 and other formats.
- the_biot 5y agoIt went a little further than that. IIRC it was specifically higher quality than the human ear could possibly hear. Young's response to this rational, science-based criticism was just pathetic; actual fact-based reasoning had no chance against his ego. Excuse me if this latest drama of his makes me roll my eyes.
- major505 5y agoLet's not forget the hiper expensive player that came together, the Pono. How the Hell was you suposed to put that thing in your pocket with that triangular shape?
- classichasclass 5y agoOh, golly, the Pono. That's $400 I won't get back, so don't get me started. Oh, wait. http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2015/01/and-now-for-something-completely.html http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2015/01/and-now-for-something...
- Mandatum 5y agoPeople celebrating Spotify don’t realise that they’ve selectively gone through Rogans more spicy episodes historically and removed on edited them. This is business.
- tacLog 5y ago> People celebrating Spotify don’t realise that they’ve selectively gone through Rogans more spicy episodes historically and removed on edited them. Wouldn't it be interesting if someone compared the current cuts with past cuts to see what they wanted/needed to remove.
- inter_netuser 5y agoWasn’t this in the end proven to be a rogue employee? I mean they would say that, ofc, but seems like really that was the case?
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoSome of the prohibited episodes were obvious candidates for suppression like Alex Jones but I remember seeing the list and finding a few real headscratchers. Going to guess there were some specific comments in those episodes that an employee didn't like rather than a general opposition to the guest overall. It's unfortunate that Spotify wasn't more transparent about their review process but tech companies seem to be really fond of the notion that rules cannot be made clear because then people the hate might follow them, denying the opportunity to silence them.
- exodust 5y agoNeil Young insulting young people: "Most of the listeners...on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth." [1] 24yo's don't need informational protection by the actions of crusty old rockers. Neil Young: "...these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on SPOTIFY.... they think everything they hear on SPOTIFY is true." Ridiculous and condescending. He thinks young people are mindless zombies, dazzled by big tech platform brands, unable to think for themselves. Neil Young: "unfortunately SPOTIFY continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art. Soon my music will live on in a better place." He sounds like a grumpy old man, throwing around ultimatums, then burning bridges on his way out when the plan didn't work. [1] https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-The-Name-Of-Truth https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-T...
- labster 5y agoSeriously. Old man, look at my life. I’m a lot like you were.
- Ostrogodsky 5y ago
- dang 5y agoSince you've continued to break the HN guidelines after we repeatedly asked you to stop, I've banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29756061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29756061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835124 If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- johncena33 5y agoThe problem with this kind of requests if you comply with it, then you've set a precedence. Then who knows who else is going to get offended and then start demanding something else to be taken down. And the worst case scenario in this attention hungry culture how many others will start making demands like this just for more publicity? I can't read minds. I didn't know this artist before this debacle. It certainly brought him a lot of free publicity. How many people are going to start doing the same now given the amount of free publicity?
- awb 5y agoNeil Young was one of the most gifted songwriters and musicians of the 60s and 70s (and produced popular music since then but not anywhere near that peak, save a brief resurgence in the 90s). If you haven’t listened to him before, “Heart of Gold” was his biggest hit. Anyway, it’s a huge stretch to say that he’s looking for attention 60 years past his prime, and probably only a few years from his 80th birthday. He’s already made his millions and lives quietly in rural Canada and California. My guess is that he actually is bothered by Rogan’s content and doesn’t want to be associated with him. It’s more akin to a boycott than a publicity stunt IMO.
- palijer 5y ago>> Young, a long-time proponent of high-resolution music files, also wrote that "many other platforms, Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz, to name a few, present my music today in all its High-Resolution glory—the way it is intended to be heard, while unfortunately Spotify continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art." It is interesting how Young will stand up against spreading misinformation, and continue to make blatantly untrue statements such as this. I wonder if he somehow isn't up to date with the technology, science and research in this field after being involved in it for so long, or if it is a branding decision and some persona to be kept as a public entertainer.
- jakub_g 5y agoDo you mean that Spotify has same quality, or that there's no perceived difference between Spotify vs other higher bitrate? (Any links to validate?) Spotify has quality setting in app but from what I've heard it's still lower bitrate than Tidal for example and apparently the diff can be heard. (Although I saw some blog a while ago claiming that quality distortion on Spotify is a side-effect of some DRM/watermarking they do).
- rdlw 5y agoApparently Spotify's 'Very High' means 320 kbps[1]. Tidal uses FLAC, which uses as high a bitrate as is necessary; I've seen flac bitrate as high as 1800 kbps. There is an eternal debate among audiophiles as to whether FLAC makes a difference, and because the debate is about sensory quality, it seems unlikely to ever be settled: even if you say that the variations between the two are below any perceivable threshold, people will say that it causes distortions that are perceivable. As far as I know, there is no one who can reliably tell apart 320kbps mp3 and FLAC, and I'm CERTAIN that I can't. Here's a website that let's you try: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html fair warning: it's very tedious and it takes a long time. [1] https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/ https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/
- ovao 5y ago
- jamesgreenleaf 5y agoDid anyone expect a different outcome? Rogan supposedly pulls in 200M monthly listeners while Young's spotify page says he gets 6M per month. I imagine Young's manager/label tried their best to talk him down, if this wasn't a stunt for some other purpose.
- cosmotic 5y agoIt would only take 34 more artists to have the same demand to make dropping Rogan worth it, which seems doable. I'm glad someone got the ball rolling; Hopefully others take it to the finish line.
- no_butterscotch 5y agoI'll immediately leave Spotify too as a user if Spotify bends to the will of Neil Young (and I'm a NY fan as well). I imagine there's more listeners like me, and I assume there's no listeners out there that will suddenly start listening to Spotify if they aren't already.
- zaphod12 5y agoDepends on the artist...T. Swift vs. Rogan would be a pretty close thing.
- jameyk 5y ago
- s1artibartfast 5y agoMaybe not. I can't imagine Spotify wanting to set any precedent in this area. Who's to say it would stop with JRE and not end with all of their content creators fighting to platform each other. There is a lot of potential for objections across a broad swath of art.
- willcipriano 5y agoRogan listeners listen for hours on end, how long to Neil Young listeners listen for? You can't compare them 1 to 1. Rogan is better for metrics.
- jdkee 5y agoZaid Jilani has posted an insightful piece on the controversy. See https://www.inquiremore.com/p/neil-youngs-transformation-on-speech https://www.inquiremore.com/p/neil-youngs-transformation-on-...
- PickledHotdog 5y ago>Much of the left now believes that the flow of information should be centralized and controlled to achieve certain social objectives; the right or freedom to express one’s self — even if you’re dead wrong — is not really seen as important in and of itself. That’s a big reversal from the modern left’s values, at least the left that existed since the New Left came of age in the sixties. Sounds like a lot of misinformed bleating to me I mean, he says that Young's changing views simply mirror the changing views of "the left" then spouts some stat about Democrats. Democrats are left of Republicans, but very few leftists consider Democrats to be of the left in the main
- jonassalen 5y agoIt's exactly what NY asked. He didn't do it as a means to let Spotify drop Joe Rogan, but he did it out of principle. I applaud him for that.
- encryptluks2 5y agoI am not particularly fond of Joe Rogan, but I respect Rogan's principles a lot more than Neil Young. Neil Young wanted to make a political statement and the media ran with it to try to pressure Spotify into breaking a large multi-million dollar contract. Neil Young's music on Spotify is prob worth very little. I'd be surprised if Neil Young was making a $2k/mo from Spotify. Neil Young had very little to lose by making this political statement to help the media, which I'm guessing he prob got some money from the attention of pro-vax people that wanted to try to censor Rogan and thought by supporting Young that they were going to be able to have any pull.
- jjulius 5y ago>Neil Young had very little to lose by making this political statement to help the media, which I'm guessing he prob got some money from the attention of pro-vax people that wanted to try to censor Rogan and thought by supporting Young that they were going to be able to have any pull. This was hilarious, thanks for the laugh! :)
- colordrops 5y ago
- shockeychap 5y agoAs I recall, that song came out in the days following 9/11, and was based on the account of Todd Beamer and others who fought back on United 93. It was not about support for the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. I could be mistaken, but I don't think Neil Young ever came out in support of the wars. He spoke out plenty against the Iraq war, including the song "Living With War".
- taway456345 5y ago
- upsidesinclude 5y ago
- staunch 5y agoIt seems to me that both Neil Young and Joe Rogan are good people that are doing what they think is right. But, in my judgement, they're both making serious mistakes. Young is making the mistake of trying to summon and/or join a mob to silence someone. And Rogan is making the mistake of not handling his Covid-related conversations with the diligence a pandemic ethically requires. In neither case do they deserve hatred. The best outcome would be for them, or at least others, to learn from their mistakes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PickledHotdog 5y agoHow is Young trying to silence anyone? He clearly knew the answer to the question of "it's me or Rogan" before he posed it. He's just making it very clear what his position is on Spotify's tacit support of misinformation and he's taking a financial hit to boot. Comparing Young to Rogan in this instance is a bit of a stretch. Young might force people to think a bit, Rogan either directly or indirectly, is causing people to distrust the vast majority of experts with some sort of dudebro contrarian outlook - and people will die due to it
- staunch 5y agoThat's doesn't seem like an accurate take on what he's doing. Young is either hoping that other people will follow his lead or knows that it could happen. That's why he made it a big public announcement. Young is very openly trying to pressure Spotify into cancelling Rogan. Whether Young's mistake here is as big as Rogan's is a very complex question. What we can know for sure is that trying to cancel people because you disagree with them is an extremely corrosive thing to do in a free and open society. It's a very big mistake.
- sha256sum 5y ago> Young is making the mistake of trying to summon and/or join a mob to silence someone. Ironically, Rogan’s career in comedy was launched through doing exactly this (cancelling Carlos Mencia).
- throwaway22032 5y ago
- robbrown451 5y agoI like Neil, saw him in concert long ago and have listened to a ton of his music over many decades. Admittedly, hardly any in recent years unless I go on a nostalgia binge for a day or two. He is, or at least was, brilliant. I agree with him here, mostly. I wish a bunch of other artists would do the same. Censorship is a complex issue, but there is a lot of mass delusion going on recently and a lot of lives lost because of it. I haven't really listened to Rogan except clips of what he's said on this issue. But I liked him a lot on Newsradio. It's not like it is going to hurt Neil, he doesn't need the money. I can't see a huge amount of people streaming his music anymore. That said, if Neil wants to be "pro-science," he should have never pushed his high res music stuff which sure doesn't stand up to double blind testing.
- nsajko 5y ago> should have never pushed his high res music stuff which sure doesn't stand up to double blind testing. Not necessarily, e.g., AAC is pretty bad: https://forum.shotcut.org/t/crackling-distorted-audio-in-exported-video/17332 https://forum.shotcut.org/t/crackling-distorted-audio-in-exp... Apart from that, you're being severely shortsighted if you think playback is the only thing to do with an audio track.
- robbrown451 5y ago> you're being severely shortsighted Do you mean the royal you, or me specifically? I think mastering is far more important. And I agree other audio formats aren't all great. But uncompressed CD quality audio is perfectly fine, in terms of resolution, humans can't detect beyond that. Neil's Pono stuff was a waste.... it was MASSIVE datawise for no good reason.
- hunter2_ 5y agoKeep in mind there are 2 axes. In the time domain, you're absolutely right, Nyquist–Shannon proves that we don't benefit from sampling higher than twice the upper bound of human hearing. Rates like 96kHz or 192kHz are useless for quality (although in specific live situations, they have utility in that the latency would be half or quarter that of typical rates, for a given buffer size in samples). In the amplitude domain, CD quality (16 bits/sample) is pretty damn great for typical mastered audio (~96dB undithered, ~120dB dithered) but if the audio is unusually dynamic (i.e., loudness is not maximized) like with a symphony orchestra, you might actually turn up your sound system to the point where quantization noise becomes evident in the quietest parts, at which point you absolutely would benefit from more bits per sample (say, 24, yielding ~144dB of range undithered). So in practice, you're right, CDs are fine; but "humans can't detect beyond that" only truly applies in the frequency domain. We can detect latency (not applicable to playback of recordings) and we can detect quantization noise when cranking up the volume knob.
- johncessna 5y agoI like the JRE. I like that he listens to everyone and engages with them. The world could do with more of that rather than this tribalism shit. On one of his recent podcasts, he supports fox news keeping it's guests from specific no-no topics because they don't want to loose their credibility. The irony, obviously, being that Joe should also keep his guests and himself away from certain no-no topics. That's the thing though. Joe doesn't see himself as a credible news source, a voice of a movement, or any of those other things because accuse him of. It's mainly just him hanging out with his buddies smoke'n (sometimes literally) and joke'n. That's the entertaining and appeal of the show. Edit It's my fault for grouping them into the same sentence, but I didn't claim (or mean to) that his show is just junk entertainment because it's just people talking. My claim is that's the appeal of the format. He obviously has credible and knowledgeable guests on his show. I said Joe doesn't see himself as a news source or a voice of a movement. Martial arts, working out, and DMT, however, yes he probably thinks of himself as someone to take advice from there.
- beeboop 5y agoThis is the same defense Jon Stewart always used. "It's a comedy show". I'm not sure whether you're a credible news source absolves you of responsibility of spreading harmful misinformation. He has a huge platform and a huge voice. What he does isn't illegal but it's definitely not the most moral behavior.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoAs if the regular media hasn't had their own fair share of misinformation.
- vinay427 5y agoIf they're similarly guilty of misinformation, those responsible in the media should absolutely face consequences as well. This feels like whataboutism, which doesn't preclude people taking a stand against the JRE podcast.
- johncessna 5y ago
- gjsman-1000 5y agoI used to read Ars Technica a lot more, but since ~2018, the comment sections there started becoming extremely toxic and one-sided very quickly. I'm wondering if it has something to do with Condé Nast, because WIRED isn't doing too great either in that regard.
- pokstad 5y agoI noticed the same. It gives some hard insight into their present audience. I remember when it used to be more tech based and now there is an increasing political tone.
- Nemrod67 5y agoI had been reading RPS (Rock Paper Shotgun) a video-games review website until 2015 or so, then it all... changed. It's a lot less lively there now. I fear that HN has been on that road since about 2017, the Zeitgeist has changed, or maybe I was just always a strange man with strange principles :p
- hotz 5y agoYou're not alone, I just avoid it. I'd rather hope to see the same news or topics here and see what people have to say. The Ars comment section is scary and just makes me lose hope in humanity.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diego 5y agoThose of us who live in the US enjoy free speech, which clearly allows types of speech that are considered misinformation. In order for a platform to censor speech that is otherwise legal, they must either do it out of principle (they simply don't like a certain kind of speech) or as a calculated business decision because it's what their customers want. It turns out a significant number of people who support free speech also want their favorite platforms to not allow speech they don't like. The argument is "this is not free speech, it's misinformation and it's damaging." If there were valid scientific arguments proving that what we call misinformation is actually damaging, that would be a reasonable position. However, so far I have not seen anything that convinced me. All I've heard are "just so" arguments akin to "TV/videogames cause violence." What if fake news do not change people's minds as much as it may appear? We tend to listen to viewpoints (fake or not) that confirm our beliefs. All the information confirming our beliefs is out there, cannot be removed from the internet, and we will gravitate towards it. If that is true, then we are paying a high price (asking platforms to police speech beyond the law) for little or no benefit. Edit: downvoter, I would appreciate if it you could explain how you disagree with my comment.
- malermeister 5y agoFree speech only applies to the government. A private company has every right to not amplify your message if they don't want to.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> A private company has every right to not amplify your message if they don't want to. Specifically, the right of private actors to do or not do this as they please is called “free speech”.
- diego 5y agoOf course. What does that have to do with my comment? Spotify wants to carry Joe Rogan, and they also want to carry Neil Young. Neil Young is the one who wants Spotify to choose.
- pumaontheprowl 5y ago
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoI'm sure none of this has anything to do with Neil Young having a competitive streaming service named Pono and the huge amounts of publicity that comes along with such a public spat with the most popular Podcaster on the planet (I am a cynic, though): https://mixdownmag.com.au/news/industry/neil-youngs-pono-to-relaunch-as-streaming-service/ https://mixdownmag.com.au/news/industry/neil-youngs-pono-to-...
- stonogo 5y agoI am also sure, since Pono hasn't been in business for half a decade.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agohttps://www.engadget.com/2015-07-15-neil-young-music-streaming.html https://www.engadget.com/2015-07-15-neil-young-music-streami... This was an announcement from a little while ago, but I couldn't find it right away. This was his previous "bluff" to remove his music. Though, they're still in business, they don't seem very active. EDIT: Early in the morning and I'm not good at finishing sentences my first go out. Sorry =)
- erik_seaberg 5y agoIt was announced years ago but nothing seems to have happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)#System_demise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)#S...
- joshuahaglund 5y agoSpotify has a multi-year contract with Rogan, paying him more than $100 million for exclusive content. That does make me want to switch platforms. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podcast-deal-with-joe-rogan-11589913814 https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
- javajosh 5y agoMay I suggest the platform of...physical media? I know, retrograde! Inconvenient! Etc! But you can rip your media and get back a lot of the convenience, and if you want you can listen to music without involving a screen. I was never, ever okay with a big company knowing and controlling how, when, and how long I listen to my music. I dabbled, but I found it far more creepy, somehow, than even letting Google host my email (which is far more intimate, after all). So to you I say: come on back, the water is fine.
- edgyquant 5y agoThat doesn’t fill Spotifys niche. I can listen to the music I like a million ways, even pirating if I want, but Spotify suggests new music (even though it’s nowhere near as good as Pandora was when I used it years ago.)
- javajosh 5y agoLet me suggest KEXP and KCRW. They stream and have YouTube channels.
- joshuahaglund 5y agoI'd add WFMU (edit: also KXLU) to your list. But I still like to be able to skip songs and change to a whole new playlist/genre/album with basically zero effort or costs if I feel like binging on a genre. Which basically means I'm going to be subscribed to some streaming service. Youtube is a good option.
- brigandish 5y ago
- pluckyChuck 5y agoI cant hear this over the sound of my
- pluckyChuck 5y agoIt's all fine. I could barely hear the music over my vaginas steamer.
- stephc_int13 5y agoI’ve seen popular/powerful people being de-platformed, after much rumble, I once was on the side of those questioning platforms for giving “them” the opportunity to build a strong voice I didn’t want to exist. It only made things worse, the guys moved underground but their communities kept growing and felt validation in martyrdom, and soon enough they found a new, even stronger voice, and they always find ways to circumvent censorship. It should not be done because it simply does not work in the long run. Unless you prefer totalitarian regimes of course…
- root_axis 5y ago> It should not be done because it simply does not work in the long run. The phrase "work" here is pretty subjective from case to case. The outcome ultimately is determined by who is getting censored by whom and for what. As a general rule it "works" just as often as it doesn't.
- blitzar 5y agoInfowars comes to mind as a "successful" deplatforming (ignoring the fact that they still have a platform - so the label itself is bullshit)
- stephc_int13 5y agoMy case here is that censorship can be effective to shut down individuals, but it does not matter because it won’t stop what made that voice powerful, it’s often the opposite. We’re targeting messengers…
- pokstad 5y agoYoung thinks misinformation leads to vaccine skepticism, but hostile behavior like censorship and mandates are also likely to drive people away and increase distrust of science and government.
- mandeepj 5y agoI'm waiting when Apple will give ultimatum to Spotify - either AppStore or Joe Rogan.
- caaqil 5y agoAnother thread on the same subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093989
- lokar 5y agoI asked Spotify support what happened to all my Neil Young albums. They just disconnected me.
- vmception 5y agoSpotify: “that’s below my line”
- imgabe 5y agoI guess Young got tired of Rockin’ in the Free World and would rather go rock in a world where speech must be approved by The Authorities.
- paulgb 5y agoBeing free to choose not to do business that promotes misinformation is a freedom. I wouldn’t do it personally, but I respect his choice.
- imgabe 5y agoYes, freedom does mean that you are free to oppose freedom if you like.
- awb 5y agoHe’s not saying no one can listen to Rogan, that would be restricting freedom. He’s saying you can listen to Rogan, but it won’t be with me. You are free to choose and rock in the free world with whoever you want. The free world doesn’t entitle you to be able to listen to both men on the same platform. It’s like a 1 man boycott. Nothing wrong with it.
- imgabe 5y agoIf that were the case he would have left without issuing an ultimatum. Ultimatums are an attempt to force someone to do something. “Do what I want or else“ Same thing with a boycott. Do you just randomly boycott companies for no reason? No, you do it because you want them to change a policy that you don't like. In this case, Neil doesn't like that Spotify won't censor Rogan. He left to try to force them to do it. He failed.
- awb 5y agoWith a boycott you have to be happy with either result. Either you change and we still do business with you or you don’t change and I take my business elsewhere. Yes, it involves an ultimatum but both results are successful outcomes. The only way you lose is if you are unhappy with the result of your ultimatum and I haven’t heard any indication of that. I think it worked out just fine for both parties. Neil is almost 80 and decades past his prime. I doubt he cares at all about the money, it was always out of principal for him.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoWell sadly Neil Young is no Taylor Swift who can move the large caps.
- weezin 5y agoIt is kind of refreshing seeing someone actually sacrifice something for what they believe in. Whether you agree or not.
- dghughes 5y agoThe problem is it's the Joe Rogan Experience a show but people are seeing or hoping it's something intellectual but it's not. On every show the topic is Joe Rogan whether people believe that or not.
- VieEnCode 5y agoThe Decoding the Gurus podcast did an episode on Rogan’s recent discussions pushing Covid disinfo: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/robert-malone-peter-mccullough-a-litany-of-untruths https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/robert-malon...
- jks 5y agoSpotify has been advertising their podcasts for a long time, and I have listened to a few of them on the service. I even tried an episode of Joe Rogan and decided I didn't like it, but after that it seemed that Spotify's recommendation algorithm really started pushing the show. I switched to Tidal, which doesn't have quite as good a selection of artists. They do still have Neil Young.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoI disagree with Neil on this one. Trying to cancel and censor another artist because you disagree with their opinions feels very wrong. But just because I disagree with Neil doesn't mean I want to censor him or take him off Spotify or my playlists... Oh wait. He removed his music from my Spotify playlists. Why wouldn't Neil just write a song titled "Joe Rogan" and use the Spotify platform to spread his message? I'd respect that.
- systemvoltage 5y agoAs Obama says it about call-out culture, "That's not activism". [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
- greenn 5y ago> Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on Spotify are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information. Hello, 23 but close enough. This is not how I think. Spotify is not the creator of the content, they just host it. Is what Roe Rogan and his guests are saying so awful that you have to bully his host? I must be missing something.
- colinmhayes 5y agoLuckily for NY there are many more 23/24 year olds than you.
- muaytimbo 5y agoProps to Spotify for standing up for freedom of speech.
- slenk 5y agoI just refuse to listen to podcast on Spotify that are exclusive because that is against the whole nature of podcasting.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoMore like, "Neil Young removing his music from Spotify because they refused to cave to his juvenile ultimatum"
- marco_yolo 5y agoUltimatums shouldn't be rewarded. They don't allow for compromise or peaceful coexistence. Neil Young should go on JRE and share his views rather than attempt to silence others.
- errantmind 5y agoIs there an issue at all here? A person who owns some stuff decided they didn't like something and left. That is their right. Another person is exercising their free speech. That is also their right, even when some people label it misinformation. There is a lot of drama in this thread, but none worth reading.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ddtaylor 5y agoJoe Rogan is/was a comedian.
- hydrok9 5y agoIronically, probably the most "too smart for the truth" type person I know is both a massive Neil Young AND Rogan fan.
- bigmattystyles 5y agoI don't listen to JRE but does Spotify also inject ads on his podcasts? I listened to some other Spotify exclusives and to my surprise (for a paid subscription service), they had injected audio ads. I'm not talking about live reads either but flow interrupting commercial breaks. What's next, break up songs with ads?
- no_butterscotch 5y agoYes there's ads, but they're weird. They're ad reads that Joe does. And when the ads start, the "time duration scrubber" at the bottom of Spotify changes and allows you to just pull the scrubber to the end of the ad read. So unlike the rest of Spotify's ads (for music) you can skip these ads.
- ovao 5y agoYes, the show usually breaks at around the 10 minute mark for a block of ads. In some cases I’ve heard them run two blocks during an episode. Not thrilled about it, but I don’t know if that’s distinctly a Spotify thing or if content creators have the option.
- Lurkynerd 5y agoNeil Old. But seriously, as brilliant of a songwriter and musician he was, it's hard to not suspect he had ulterior motives here. He's been wanting his content off streaming platforms for a while (he's done it before, citing music quality as the supposed reason). This latest stunt vs Rogan/Spotify was a great opportunity for him to earn social brownie points while moving to stream his music on his own platform. Win-win. He is totally free to do that of course, just as Spotify is free to not be held hostage by his ultimatum.
- jasonlfunk 5y agoShouldn't the title be "Neil Young is removing his music from Spotify..." or am I mis-reading the story?
- xtalx 5y agoHow long has Neil Young been out of touch? This is the most anti-rock, anti-punk, anti-free-thinker move an old rich dude can make. No matter where one stands on the content of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Neil Young’s ideas and actions are basically irrelevant. Neil Young is beyond overrated even though many might say he’s under appreciated. Last thing, before this black text turns transparent… Why does no one talk about the fact that the discussion about “misinformation” basically assumes everyone is a dolt. Also, if everyone is so helplessly stupid, why don’t we ban infomercials for crap products like magnetic socks that “treat arthritis” or pills that make you “lose weight” as misinformation?
- maybelsyrup 5y ago> why don’t we ban infomercials for crap products like magnetic socks that “treat arthritis” or pills that make you “lose weight” as misinformation? Amen brother, where do I sign up for this
- ShamelessC 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- xtalx 5y agoThanks fallacy bot. I was not trying to discredit Neil Young’s “argument.” I was simply stating my opinion that he sucks and it’s funny that he was once a part of a counter culture and and now he’s “fighting” for the “side” that’s already “winning.” If the fallacy manifested in the latter part of my comment I think you missed the forest for the trees.
- water8 5y agoI bet that piece of humble pie taste good for Neil Young. The attempt to silence people because of fear of misinformation is absurd and needs to stop universally. No one has ever crusated against the man who said one and one equals three
- kgwxd 5y agoNeil Young removed his music from Spotify, not the other way around. The distinction seems important.
- trembonator 5y ago
- anandrm 5y agoWhy this headline other way around - It should be "Neil Young pulling his music out of Spotify" .. But this doesnt make sense ..Its free speech and opinions . Ex-President had millions of followers and was elected !! would that mean you move out of the country ..
- vardagsnytt 5y ago> Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing. I don't agree with Joe Rogan, but this is a very wild claim.
- fhakLx 5y ago
- vorhemus 5y agoIt's like telling the government to put certain companies out of business because the owner has a worldview that I don't like.
- dkobia 5y agoOne thing is clear. Spotify should probably have stuck with music. The special relationship with JRE blurs the lines between publisher and platform and their fates might end up being inextricably tied together for better or worse.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jonanin 5y agoI think removing from their platform whoever Neil Young tells them to would be much more of a special relationship. Do you really think Spotify is inclined to deplatform any podcaster because of threats from an artist? That’d just encourage more and more threats to remove whoever the next artist doesn’t happen to like.
- rusk 5y ago> removing from their platform whoever Neil Young tells them to they aren't though, and Neil isn't saying they should because he says so, but out of a sense of moral decency, and he simply doesn't want to be associated with them if they're going to be gibing a platform for dangerous nonsense. It's actually up to Joe to take responsibility for his role as a public service broadcaster (whether he likes it or not) and ensure he moderates his message. He's too big to be an "outsider" "upstart" or "underdog" or whatever it is people think it is that justifies contrarian hot takes. It's time to step back and realise that he's in a "Free Speech Antitrust" kind of category.
- pfortuny 5y agoDo you think the same about rap? Because it is not exactly opinion-free and society-building.
- herbstein 5y ago> Because it is not exactly opinion-free and society-building. What a backwards way of characterising a style of vocal delivery. As I was reading your comment I was listening to the group 'clipping.' deliver the story of an uprising on an interstellar slave ship, the loneliness of the lone survivor drifting in and out of hypersleep for millenia, and the ship's computer realising the hate it had been taught for people with a skin color had no bearing in reality. The GP talked about a specific person taking specific actions that they think was worth taking a stance against. Is your counter-argument to that highly pointed argument really to talk about everyone using a specific vocal technique? Criticise a specific artist if they step over the line. Criticise someone like Immortal Technique for his 9/11 conspiracy bullshit and his rampant homophobia, but don't use someone like him to claim that somehow _all of rap_ should be discarded.
- thenoblesunfish 5y agoI think this is good for music. I don't think people should think of Spotify as the only place that music exists. It's the new (better) "radio", but good art is often to be found in escaping and rejecting constraints, centralization, and default ways to do things. So, I'm glad that Spotify's very nature is bound to piss people like Neil Young off, regardless of the particulars of this case.
- TheMightyLlama 5y agoSurely the title should read "Neil Young requests Sportify remove his own library from the platform after voicing his displeasure with another content creator"
- basisword 5y agoStaying away from the tribalism this seems to be devolving into, I think this is quite telling. Neil Young’s music is some of the most important of the last century. He might not be getting K-Pop levels of streams but his music is incredibly important regardless. Spotify has chosen a podcast over this (for obvious financial reasons). This tells you a lot about the importance Spotify puts on music (in case it wasn’t already obvious with how aggressively they shove podcasts in your face). If you care about music, it might be time to move elsewhere.
- johanneskanybal 5y agoIt's a platform the idea that I would request you not being allowed on the internet because we have different opinions is ludicrous even if in this case rogan isn't my cup of tea.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoDisagree. I think Neil Young's music is vague ambiguous pretty lacking in substance and borderline unlistenable. Dana Carvey does a great bit about 'Every Neil Young song you've ever heard' https://youtu.be/mPpgB3OA5mM https://youtu.be/mPpgB3OA5mM
- basisword 5y agoYou may not like his music but it’s undeniable how important it is in terms of records sold, influence, awards, etc.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoSort of. I know Taylor Swift has more album sales and Grammys. As for influence, why do people care what a daily pot smoking artist, who was reportedly expelled from college, thinks about politics anyway? Why do people care what any artist thinks about politics?
- samsa 5y ago
- unixhero 5y agoAaah, musicians wishing to be politicians.
- Ekaros 5y agoI think this is correct response. Anything else is start of slippery slope. First okay removing pod-cast. But what next some other big name demands removing some other artist, maybe upcoming competitor? Should they acquiesce to that too? Where would it end? A trust of well-connected artists dictating who can be with them on the same platform?
- wahnfrieden 5y agoMaybe they should if they’re spreading medical disinformation
- Renaud 5y agoI think the crux of the issue is not that Spotify carries Rogan's podcast like they do 1000s others. It's that Spotify is paying mountains of $ to Rogan for exclusivity. Spotify is not a passive party in this, they are actively promoting and contributing money to the generation and promotion of extremely dubious content on their platform. I wouldn't mind so much if they were just carrying that particular podcast amongst a sea of others, I do question Spotify's ethics as a company that's made a conscious choice to finance misinformation. Probably nothing more than a difference of opinion, but I'm not keen on supporting a company that cannot be considered neutral any more.
- matwood 5y agoIt's not that they are financing it, it makes them tons of money. It's a lot like Fox news hosts railing against mask and vaccine mandates, yet everyone in the building is vaccinated and wearing masks. It's a grift and makes a lot of money on people looking to be outraged or go against 'the man'.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nojs 5y agoIt ends with you becoming Google/Facebook, trying and failing to police everything people say, and all sides hating you. The company is wise to avoid publicly positioning itself as the arbiter of content for as long as it can.
- fhakOW 5y ago
- shimonabi 5y agoI've never listened to Neil Young, but he has every right to do this. I also have the right to uninstall Spotify from all my devices because I don't agree with them platforming anti-vaxxers.
- arthur6667 5y agoYou know what the problem is with spotify and JRE. They not only host it, they push it. I cancelled my Spotify because EVERY SINGLE DAY I'd have to see that pathetic loosers face on my home screen. This is not about 'free speech' or whatever, it is about a company pushing dangerous content with no way to say 'nah, I'd rather not'. They have zero respect for their users & zero respect for artists. Fuck spotify.
- mr90210 5y agoI thought I was the only one dealing with that.
- nixish 5y agoJoe Rogan should interview this guy next: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai Ayyadurai is notable for his widely disputed claim of being the "inventor of email". This would be at par with the mRNA inventor guy :), and increase Rogan’s podcast credibility…
- yessirwhatever 5y agoMy take on this this is it has nothing to do with Joe Rogan, Neil Young, or Spotify. The mainstream media push against podcasting is really a fight to hold for their power. People who think they have the power to tell people "what's going on" are annoyed that a mere "podcaster" can also do the same nowadays. It's pretty interesting when you start to notice the derogatory tone mainstream-media celebrities use when talking about podcasts. The idea that some rando (in their mind) can just skirt the whole path they suffered through to get where they are, and have enough power to have their say and affect people's mind. People in this group include people like Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Matt Lauer, Jake Tapper, etc... Those television journalists have it in their mind that they're the authority, and their authority is being challenged now by the fact that a podcaster is becoming more and more of a big-shot. It's pretty much the same push initially against youtube, social-media, and possibly even the internet, before corporate media managed to find a way to use those tools to their benefit. This also explains the push for monitoring, regulating (aka controlling) what's being said via this medium. Mainstream media is not just TV "journalism", but also the rapidly deteriorating online/print journalism: - https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-challenge-of-detecting-misinformation-in-podcasting/ https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-challenge-of-detect... - https://theguardian.com/media/2020/dec/12/sinister-sounds-podcasts-are-becoming-the-new-medium-of-misinformation https://theguardian.com/media/2020/dec/12/sinister-sounds-po... - https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-matters-hot-pod-spotify-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-...
- hutzlibu 5y ago"The mainstream media push against podcasting is really a fight to hold for their power." So Neil Young represents mainstream media? As far as I can tell, this was a personal initiative from Neil Young, so your points against the arrogance of mainstream media people might be legit, but with no connection to this case.
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- dwardu 5y ago
- simonswords82 5y agoMakes me wonder if Spotify could have created a DMZ between their music and podcasting revenue streams to protect them from one another. Podify for podcasts and Spotify for music. Just a thought....
- trembonator 5y ago
- motoboi 5y ago> Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. > These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information. > They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out. I believe the crux of the thing lies here, in that second paragraph. 60 years old are the people who believes in TV networks, radios stations and podcasts. 24 years old grew up used to the the fact that “on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog”. Meaning that they know that anyone can say anything on the internet and have a YouTube channel about that, a podcast about that. And that podcast or YouTube channel can look just as a TV news show or a mainstream radio show. Meaning that they know for a fact that a podcast or a YouTube channel is just someone’s ideas. That realization actually when further and 24 years old actually understand that a TV show and a radio show also are someone’s ideas, distorted by the need to please advertisers and people who think some things cannot be shown on TV (or the radio). It’s the 60 years old people that failed to understand those things. They are stuck in the mindset where things shown on a screen (or broadcast in audio) are true and mainstream (as in everyone believed in them). And they became prey to people (24 years old) who wanted to sell things, win elections or convert them into their cults (ideologies). So, 60 years old think Spotify should ban joe Rohan. 24 yearly old just don’t listen to it if they don’t like those ideas. 60 years old want to ban some ideas from the world, because they fear that every broadcast idea is true, therefore if those strange and fringe ideas as broadcast, they fear they will become true. Friends, the earth was moved just below your feet and you didn’t realized that people have always been believing in strange ideas, they just have been restricted out of the TV and radio. Now that anyone and everyone has its own tv show and radio station, those strange ideas are easily accessible to anyone. As soon as today’s 24 years old become the world’s 60 years old and the old mindset is gone, things will come back to normal. Meaning: Joe Rogans guests can think whatever they want, I don’t care.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoYep,... and those 60yo watch Dr. Oz and similar scam artists, and believe them, because "it's on TV".
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWould this even be a problem if most people didn't get their music/podcasts from a single massive entity? If Spotify has to make such calls they're obviously too big.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoWe don't trust artists with medical diagnosis or designing a bridge. Yet in politics they're immediately as respected as someone with a law degree in constitutional law and philosophy from Harvard. Can anyone explain to me, why people care about artists' political views? I've never understood this and I'm being completely serious. is it a remnant of the '60s anti-war movement?
- christophilus 5y agoI’m no Joe Rogan fan, but I can say this about him: I guarantee that he’d have Neil Young on the podcast. Obviously, the reverse is not true.
- mkmk3 5y agoIt's funny that the tone some of the Rogan proponents take seems to turn some of the discussion here sour by being so confrontational, though the negativity towards Rogan is repeatedly backed up by some lackluster proof, and seems similarly ideological. He's never claimed to be authoritative about anything besides MMA and comedy. He has long form discussions where he expresses opinions. Calling him dangerous because he's willing to discuss important topics with a wide range of people... it's like saying people shouldn't discuss things they aren't experts on in general, maybe? And further, it's saying you have the authority to denote what makes an expert (it's not being an MD, doctors disagree with each other sometimes). If I'm not a doctor, and suggest some medicinal treatment to a good friend that does more harm than good, am I responsible? I'd argue possibly. If I'm saying I'm an idiot about this topic every couple of hours, I'd argue not. I'm not claiming expertise. Even if I've read some articles and I say as much, my friends know me, I don't posture, I don't know shit. I expect them to be responsible enough to act accordingly. Broadcasters have some level of responsibility. I don't know how much that should be or how it should be enforced. I think this might need to be done on the individual level, in your own discussions and considerations. I just think it's silly when people claim to know the truth and try to silence people, even if it seems clear to you what's correct. I think it pushes everyone into their own sides further. We're not at war with each other and we don't want to be. Be chill, question people with honest and positive curiosity, and be friendly. Maybe you'll bring someone to a more reasonable side, or maybe you'll figure out you're being the unreasonable one. Sometimes people don't bite, but if you try you've done your part.
- Grustaf 5y agoWouldn't it be more accurate to say that Neil Young removed his music from Spotify? After failing to blackmail them, sure, but he did the removing himself. I love his music and never listened to Rogan, but this just seems like an attempt to stay relevant, while virtue signalling.
- crmd 5y agoOne of the best things about my analog record collection is that the grooves don’t disappear when the artist starts fighting with their label or distributor.
- fixtool 5y agoI think many people miss the point - it is a podcast and not a news stream. Especially in case of JR, what I like about him, he does not have a paper of questions in front of whim, or a guide of some sort in front of him that provides interview scheme and main questions to ask. He obviously has it and keeps the key points in mind to route discussion across the topics he thinks of a most interest with invited guest. But that projects environment of a nice talk, with a friend who stopped by today - we talk, we debate, we drink and smoke and make jokes. What I personally find a lot in his podcast, due to the incredible diverse guests pool, is points of view, historical facts, ways to think about the same issue I never thought before, some laughs, some tears and move on with some baggage in my head. He always says - do not listen to me, do not repeat what I did, and when he says something guests, who very often, do not have any vested interests of any sort, are free to disagree with him, correct him on his mistakes and it happened multiple times. So if he says something controversial, and guest does not correct him it might be mostly because of - guest does not know much about it - does not want to start debate on the subject - agrees with him What about Young - I'm sorry for him, he made a mistake. Music is not about right or wrong, music is nice, and it's emotion. If you want that your music "tells" something, preaches a way to see things, so be it. But what Young did, is the same as I refuse to use Nginx because some pedophile sites use it. Spotify is a platform, for God sake, let it be it. This all messed up and I don't think there is a way out of this stupid situation, other than something really big, really massively bad happening on the planet, or at least in "developed" world, so it kind of resets priorities in people, to the "normal" (whatever that is, but not definitely this)
- stillbourne 5y agoI'm sorry but I pay spotify for music not Joe Rogan, I have 3 playlists that had Neil Young on them. I'm switching back to YARing music.
- iszomer 5y ago
- Overtonwindow 5y agoNeil is yesterday, Rogan is now and the future. I guess Spotify looked at the numbers?
- foxyv 5y agoI honestly hate censorship in all of it's forms. If we start censoring Joe Rogan, how long will it take for them to go after Star Talk and other science podcasts. Joe Rogan introduced me to the Wim Hof method which is a lot of fun even though I don't believe half the supposed benefits. Sure, he's platforming fascists and assholes. But he also platforms people like Andrew Yang. We aren't children in elementary school. I like being able to hear something and make a decision about what is garbage and what is not. So do a lot of other people. I don't want people to tell me what is "Safe" for me to listen to. Just like I don't want someone to tell me what is safe to read. I want to read Maus. I want to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sometimes I want to listen to Joe Rogan and his guests. I want to listen to the people who shit all over Joe Rogan and his guests. The shame isn't that Joe Rogan exists. The shame is an abiding ignorance that makes Joe Rogan a household name.
- kyleblarson 5y agoNeil Young is so woke that he canceled himself to support big pharma and overreaching authoritarianism.
- wreath 5y agoIm really (negatively) surprised by an artist who is straight up against freedom of speech even if he disagrees with the content. We're in this weird place where we label anything we disagree with as disinformation. I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan's podcast, but not Joe himself. He brings in interesting and different people and allows them to share their thoughts and experiences without interruption you see on TV or much setup, or most importantly, censorship. You can disagree with what his guests are saying, or his views, but it's really dangerous to push for deplatforming him or his guests simply because you disagree with their views.