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Joni Mitchell pulling music from Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young
- coldtea 5y ago
- yuppie_scum 5y agoI have to imagine the overlap between Joni Mitchell and Rogan listeners is pretty slim
- coldtea 5y agoEspecially since the whole Venn circle of Joni Mitchell listeners in 2022 is pretty slim.
- archagon 5y agoFun fact! Instead of making stuff up, you can just look it up! Joni Mitchell monthly listeners: 3,732,448 Taylor Swift monthly listeners: 53,819,855 Seems like she’s doing pretty OK to me.
- coldtea 5y ago14 times worse than Taylor Swift, despite having 3 times the career span and back catalogue? That's about what (90s Danish-Norwegian euro-pop act) Aqua get on Spotify (and tons of other acts besides, even one-hit wonders).
- archagon 5y agoA 60's and 70's folk singer vs. Taylor Swift, a modern mega-artist that almost every young person knows the name of? Yeah, 14x sounds pretty darn fine to me.
- wgj 5y agoYou can count me in that circle. I have recently, finally, gotten around to listening to her late 70s albums Hejira and Mingus, and plan to continue through her later albums. Genius isn't dictated by marketing and pop radio.
- coldtea 5y agoNo, but impact on Spotify is (which was my point). No Joni would be equivalent in "lost streams" to no Aqua or no Max Richter.
- slibhb 5y agoThis is not the case. Old music does good business. This has been a popular topic recently in the media e.g. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI didn't know who she is and I'm in my early 40's. I recognized the music when I looked her up though, I've heard some of it before of course, just didn't know the name.
- wsc981 5y agoIt's weird to me that the author of "Living in the Free World" tries to censor someone that doesn't share his views.
- kdtsh 5y agoWho is censoring anyone? Both Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are exercising their freedom to associate with who they like, and expressing the terms by which they will associate with businesses like Spotify. I have always found it very telling how people who support free speech change their tune when they stand to lose their platform and audience because other people on those platforms do not wish to associate themselves with them. Would you prefer if artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were forced to keep their content on Spotify even though they don’t agree with their association with Joe Rogan at the present time? - or if not, then what exactly is the problem? Freedom of speech and freedom of association are two sides of the same street. If Joe Rogan is free to say whatever foolish nonsense he wants, as I believe he generally is if he’s not actively harming anyone, then Neil Young and Joni Mitchell (and others) are free to pull their content from the same platform to protest the platform bankrolling him. You should have freedom of speech, but there is no such thing as freedom of a platform for it - if people don’t want to hear it or be associated with it, they don’t have to, and they can withdraw their support (financial, content, etc.) of such platforms. Also - it’s Rockin’ In The Free World, and the song is a biting and cynical satire. I’m not sure how you’re drawing a line between these two things unless you haven’t heard the lyrics before.
- erik_seaberg 5y agoIf I don’t like the deal you made with me, fine, I’ll walk away, that’s negotiation. If I don’t like the deal you made with someone else, that’s extortion. It might be legal but it’s unethical. IANAL but it might even be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious_interference_with_a_business_relationship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference#Tortious....
- archagon 5y agoNope, that is perfectly fine. If I work for you, and you decide to contract with the military, I will walk away from the job. Acceptable by any measure. This situation is largely the same.
- josephcsible 5y agoI like this trend of cancel-culture people cancelling themselves instead of others.
- sharken 5y agoMakes me want to cancel Neil Young for a good while, even though he makes great music. The Corona vaccine works well, but being critical of the vaccine is a healthy thing. Thankfully we are moving towards treating the flu and Corona virus the same way. Omicron has made that transition a lot easier.
- josephcsible 5y ago> Makes me want to cancel Neil Young for a good while, even though he makes great music. If you do this, you've stooped to their level. Don't do this. Be better than them.
- sharken 5y agoYou are quite right of course, i do think Neil Young is making a big mistake here. Am looking forward to seeing a lot less COVID stories, there are bigger issues that humanity needs to deal with.
- MisterSandman 5y agoI understand that view, but Joe Rogan did a lot more than just criticise the vaccine.
- dekhn 5y agoThe problem is that joe rogan is actively undermining the public health mission, not that he is being intellgently critical of vaccines in a healthy way.
- peteradio 5y agoThe public health mission did an end-run around public discourse. The turbulence caused by that is absolutely the fault of the public health authority.
- doopy1 5y ago"in solidarity" kind of makes it sound like Young got kicked off Spotify instead of asking to be removed.
- dragonwriter 5y agoNo, solidarity often refers to actions chosen to magnify the impact of another's chosen action. A solidarity strike isn't (at least normally) where the first union was locked out, but usually one chosen by the second union to add additional pressure to the strike undertaken by the first union.
- doopy1 5y agoI see. Maybe my interpretation of the term is a bit deviated from the norm.
- arrakis2021 5y agoThis is becoming pretty funny to watch
- osullip 5y agoOlder artists do not need to rely on Spotify for their income. They have an older fan base that still buy the old way. Neil Young sold 50% of his publishing rights for $150m[0], so he is doing fine without Spotify. It is much harder for new artists to make a similar stand. They rely too heavily on Spotify for exposure and the small amount of income they get from playlists and automatically being added via the algorithms used. So it is easier for the older artists to 'make a stand' without much cost to themselves. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/01/26/social-media-users-ask-who-is-neil-young-after-singer-demanded-his-music-be-removed-from-spotify/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/01/26/social-me...
- michelb 5y agoWill be interesting to see what happens after Covid. I think the tolerance for the people spreading Qanon nonsense and other conspiracy theories has decreased tremendously. I'm pretty sure there will be other conspiracy theories, misinformation, or total nonsense that Joe Rogan or his guests will peddle after Covid, as he has been doing before. I'm curious to see how many musicians or podcasters are ready to leave Spotify.
- yostrovs 5y agoThough Rogan may be spreading false ideas around, he is incomparable to the MSM making up stories and misleading the public in the last decade or so that I've been monitoring. There's a reason Rogan has audience in the millions. People have lost trust after being lied to repeatedly.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYou should probably stop watching OAN and Fox news then.
- yostrovs 5y agoI don't have cable, but if you have your opinion you should be the one considering different sources of information. Just the fact that three years, at least, were devoted to the non existent Russia collusion story, and almost nothing else, should be enough to change the channel.
- bongwaterblack 5y ago
- jeffrallen 5y agoYay! Spotify: you are now a content producer, take responsibility for it. Duh.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoMusic platforms hosting their music have long offered countless songs glorifying misogyny. Why haven't either of them spoken out against misogyny on the platforms they share? Is misogyny ok? There are lots of podcasts on those platforms with all kind of hate for various different demographic groups. Neither of them have spoken out against those podcasts so they must approve of them. The only moral choice for them now is to remove themselves from all music platforms that host misogynic music, which is pretty much every platform. Also any platform that hosts podcasts must be abandoned unless they approve of the content of all of those podcasts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- intvocoder 5y agohttps://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...
- rosndo 5y agoPerhaps it’s not unreasonable to criticize people on the hills which they pick, Joe Rogans covid stuff is a particularly weird hill to pick over racism or misogyny. There is vastly more damaging content on spotify than Joe Rogan, some of it is certainly more popular than him.
- enkid 5y agoSo is the problem that they aren't acting sooner or that they shouldn't act at all? Because I don't see how an argument that bad stuff is happening invalidates people acting against other bad stuff.
- rosndo 5y agoI’m not sure why you think that this would invalidate anything. I’m just making a simple observation that this hill in particular is a weird one to die on. And you know, perhaps, if someone chooses to die on this particular hill we can rightfully wonder about their commitment to other, much more meaningful causes?
- tromp 5y agoI think it may take a few more high-profile artists defecting before Spotify reconsiders. Whatever tips the financial bottom line balance. They could get the artists back by just pulling that one JRE episode, but would that break their contract with Joe Rogan?
- dawnerd 5y agoIf the stock doesn't rebound that might just be it. It's what ~4b lost so far? I'm sure the main shareholders wont be too happy to find out they could have stopped this early on with little impact.
- webkike 5y agoI’m not really convinced that the market value lost by Spotify has anything to do Neil Young. It’s much more likely that it’s just general market trends - the same thing has been happening to most tech stocks over the last couple of weeks
- joshuaheard 5y agoThe stock price has been trending down for the last month, along with the rest of the market. I don't think this issue has had much of an impact. It's ironic that these Sixties artists who sang about freedom from "the man" are now trying to force a giant corporation to censor another artist.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> It's ironic that these Sixties artists who sang about freedom from "the man" are now trying to force a giant corporation to censor another artist. It would be ironic if artist- and artist-backed-consumer boycotts against giant corporations over actions including political messaging and associations weren't as much a part of the strategy of those same people in the 1960s and the rest of the intervening years as it is today.
- choko 5y ago
- kjellsbells 5y agoI guess this is personal for them, since they both suffered from polio as children and are of the generation that would have understood how devastating diseases could be and how miraculous a vaccine can be. Also it helps that they control their own catalog.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chromakode 5y agoYoung does not have complete ownership of his catalog. He sold a 50% stake earlier this year. He needed to ask Warner Bros. to do it: https://fortune.com/2022/01/27/neil-young-couldnt-remove-music-from-spotify-alone-music-label-heres-why/ https://fortune.com/2022/01/27/neil-young-couldnt-remove-mus...
- simlevesque 5y agoThis reads like Warner Bros has an interest in tanking Spotify.
- sva_ 5y agoOr they just realized the publicity could get them to sell more albums.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rkk3 5y agoLooking forward to when R Kelly pulls the "Remix to Ignition" from Spotify to protest Joe Rogan.
- robbedpeter 5y agoI think he's too busy protesting being peed on by other pink-suited deviants in his cell.
- icare_1er 5y ago
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- nathanaldensr 5y agoTo quote Jeremy Clarkson: > Oh no! ... Anyway...
- TheMightyLlama 5y agoI find that I’m beginning to see a trend. Perhaps an early one to the majority of people (millions of users rather than the internet literate hacker news people). And that is to hold a position “your information is bad” without saying what their basis for comparison is. I’m all for people making a stand. But if there’s no rebuttal, I will remain unconvinced.
- psbp 5y agoI notice a trend where HN comments are intentionally vague. What exactly is your point here?
- kova12 5y agoLet me make a point... A couple centuries ago the similar story unfolded with some Galileo fella. I understand a few chaps were even burnt at stake (yikes!). The spat was about some astrophysical matter, and it was obvious to everybody that the guy is spreading misinformation. Just a little problem - turns out Galileo dude was actually right. Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... So, how do you know you are even on the right side here if instead of debating the matters you just want to shut the guy up?
- icare_1er 5y agoSome governments, like Sweden for instance, have an official stance which matches the one made on JRE's show regarding Covid, ie: "no need to vaccinate children". Will those artists ask for their songs not to be played in all those countries ?
- psbp 5y agoI listened to JRE until mid-last year and I'm surprised how many people sanitize his views on Covid/vaccines. He thinks that any "young" person (20s and below) should be hesitant on taking the vaccine. He believes that taking the vaccine is more likely to cause adverse health effects than getting Covid for younger people. He's convinced that alternate treatments like monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin are a better alternative to the vaccine. He believes that masks are emasculating and make people look "stupid". Any form of lockdown is government overreach. Most of these claims are dubious if not outright false, and these aren't just occasional opinions thrown out during his 3+ hour long conversations, he makes it a point to bring these topics up for a large portion of his interviews. That's ignoring the fact that he brings on guests who have fringe opinions about Covid/vaccination but rarely (if ever since early 2020) interviews experts who are pro-vaccine.
- kcplate 5y agoIf Joe Rogan and his controversial guests can make make a better argument for their pandemic perspective and influence people better than the CDC, Fauci, heath experts, et al. I’d argue that is more a failure of the CDC, Fauci, health experts, et al. as opposed to any failure of Spotify to censor and pull content from their platform. If people want to make Joe Rogan inconsequential to the pandemic they should demand much better quality communication and chaos from our health experts, which has been sadly to date—all over the map.
- psbp 5y agoJRE doesn't have open debates between pro/anti vaccine guests. He gives 3+ hours of air time to vaccine conspiracy theorists with very little pushback. It's easy to get swayed by a contrarian opinion if that's the only one you hear.
- coolso 5y agoI really hope Neil Young and Joni Mitchell (and any other artists of their ilk who think it should be basically illegal for people to hear anti-establishment opinions they don’t like) follow each other into removing their names from all news article headlines as well.
- icare_1er 5y ago[flagged]
- electrondood 5y agoHe didn't invent them, he worked on research to develop them. Also, the issue is not that Rogan is just sharing an unpopular opinion, or featuring guests with unpopular opinions. The issue is that Rogan has repeatedly used his platform to promote COVID disinformation that people believe, which results in actual deaths and undermines effective efforts to mitigate the impact.
- Scea91 5y agoIs there a central universally trusted authority that decides what is disinformation? Is actually having such authority a good thing? Note that I am not saying disinformation does not exist. I am saying that deciding what is disinfo is often difficult. In that light I think it is better to not limit information and instead of censorship fight it with counterarguments
- hourislate 5y agoI'm a fan of both artists but I don't think Joni Mitchell or Neil Young are even relevant to Spotify and their bottom line. Most folks under 30-35 probably don't even know who they are.
- EdSharkey 5y agoThe timing is suspect given the profile of the disease has diminished and continues to fade. I wouldn't be surprised if a gruntled woke faction inside Spotify is trying to get out of the Rogan contract and that's what this is all about. Lust for money and power over the past two years explain all the headscratchers like this for me.
- coolso 5y agoYou make a good point; another possibility is the COVID clingers all see the end on the horizon and are grasping at straws trying to take advantage of one last opportunity to admonish/control people.
- sharken 5y agoThanks for the term "COVID clingers", it gets the message across.
- EdSharkey 5y agoThis is an aggressive take. I don't entirely disagree, but it gives people the emotional fuel to dismiss our opinions as cracked. I prefer using mundane "greed" to explain the utter fuckery and torture the last 2 years have been. The past 5 years have seen constant, back-to-back gaslightings. And, I am surrounded by people who think it's all normal. A busybody at my place of business revels in dangerously libeling unvaccinated people as "plague bearers". The world is so filled with comfortable useful idiots like that who have NO IDEA how much ego death (or worse) awaits them when/if they find out they were duped.
- josephcsible 5y agoI feel like greed is the wrong term for the COVID clingers, since it basically means addiction to money in particular, but the COVID clingers are addicted to power.
- EdSharkey 5y ago
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- GoodJokes 5y ago
- kova12 5y agoThis is classic bullying. A group of cowards get together and beat up some poor fella who can't respond in kind. I don't understand how did this become acceptable.
- cehrlich 5y agoWho is the poor fella in this analogy? Rogan, who got paid $100M to do his podcast there? Or Spotify, with a market cap of $32B?
- kova12 5y agoSo, they made good money, and that's why you think it is OK to behave in such manner?
- cehrlich 5y agoWhere by "behave in such manner" you mean people pulling their music from Spotify? Sure, why not? Should they not be allowed to do that?
- kova12 5y agoWhen I was a kid, the big guy would approach me and pretend to hit me in the face, but stopping a fist an inch from my face. He was saying: "what am I - not supposed to move my hands? I am not touching you". That's an approximation to your reasoning. Yeah, they are not bullying anybody, they just pulling their music, nothing else is happening.
- commoner 5y agoThat's a poor analogy, since the artists are walking away from the situation entirely. If a friend of yours starts inviting over someone who does things you find distasteful, you have the right to stop spending time with them. There is no ethical issue with this, because anyone can exercise their freedom of association, which also happens to be a right protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
- CottonMcKnight 5y agoSpotify was so desperate to get into podcasting that they immediately did whatever it took to get the biggest fish in the sea. Joe Rogan is their Moby Dick. They got their whale.
- Overtonwindow 5y agoCould there be a generational angle to this? Would it matter if Billie Eilish pulled her music?
- rkk3 5y agoBillie has 50M monthly views, more than 5x their combined monthly views so that would definitely matter. The generational angle is probably more that the geriatric generation spends their free time watching cable "news" and its perpetual outrage machine.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoJust a PSA that Spotify has Lost Prophets available still: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lostprophets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lostprophets So all of these artists who don't agree with other artists/people on Spotify where ok up until now?
- peteradio 5y agoBoth Canadians, I wonder what they think about the limits to free travel occurring for millions of their kin?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoGood riddance, another person I won't bother listening to any longer. I don't need my music providers telling me how to live my life. I don't listen to Joe Rogan, it is easily accomplished by not going to his podcast. Basically it is incredibly easy to avoid Rogan on spotify. That's how choice works. I'm glad spotify gives me a choice and trusts me as an adult to make my own decisions.
- senectus1 5y agoI'll do ya one better. just don't use spotify... I don't, I object to the pitiful amount of money they pay to artists. It means I don't use streaming music services but its worth it i think.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThe music is licensed and paid for, I'll use Spotify as I like. No one is guaranteed a living in this world. Again, you should do that, though! It's great that we have choices in what services we get to choose and where we get to sell the rights to our products. This is much better than the government telling us or some activist group demanding we cancel everything they don't believe in rather than simply giving us information as to why we should pursue a particular actions.
- Grismar 5y agoOK boomer. Which is exactly what I felt when young left. I despise Rogan and I don't like that Spotify got in bed with him like they did. But the behaviour of these artists is hypocritical and tone-deaf. Bring out a duet criticising Rogan and put it on the Spotify front page by promoting the hell out of it. I thought that was what these hippies were all about, positive change. Not this entitled precious rich person "I can afford not to be on here"-bullshit.
- oliwarner 5y agoThis seems like a much more effective nonviolent protest to me. You clearly don't like it, but maybe that's the power right there. Agree or not, you're thinking about it.