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Neil Young to Spotify employees: CEO Daniel Ek is ‘your problem, not Joe Rogan’
- willis936 5y ago"To baby boomers, I say that 70 percent of your country’s financial assets are in your hands compared with just 5 percent for millennials,” he wrote. “You and I need to lead. In our age of Climate Chaos, I say ditch the companies contributing to the mass fossil fuel destruction of Earth. Jesus wept. You're 76, Neil. Your generation did its damage. No amount of vocalizing will whitewash the 20th century. The memory of the baby boomers will not be forgotten for a long time.
- ncr100 5y agoEquating Joe Rogan using racism and anti science to the impact of a "generation" of American humanity is nonsense.
- m1gu3l 5y agoWelcome to the internet, it’s more fun if you don’t try to make it make sense.
- willis936 5y agoThat isn't what I did. I criticized a statement made by a public figure in context. He's trying to make it seem like he, as a rich and influential person his entire adult life through the back half of the 20th century, is not culpable for the mess that needs mopping. He thinks that saying words now will have people forget his inaction.
- kreetx 5y agoAlso, the baby boomers have much more than millennials because they've had more time to have income.
- throwawaysea 5y agoI am surprised news outlets are still trying to give life to this manufactured crisis. Who cares what Neil Young thinks about any of this? Why are these celebrities put on a pedestal by news media and individuals? At best, Neil Young is a has-been whose music will soon be forgotten by newer generations that have long since moved on. More importantly, Neil Young has shown himself to be for censorship and against the free exchange of ideas. His stance is fundamentally at odds with free societies that harbor enlightenment values. The problem is not Rogan or Ek, but Young and the new authoritarian pro-censorship/deplatforming political tribes, who abuse their voice and power to silence those who don’t share their ideology. That’s not the stance of reasonable people - that’s the stance of zealots, no different than religious zealots of a different era.
- mohanmcgeek 5y agoNews outlets run smear campaigns to destroy their competition. This has less to do with politics.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- devwastaken 5y agoA free market, though it does not exist, includes companies censoring anything and everything. The idea that consumers can't tell a business what to do is yet more fascism via capitalism.
- throwawaysea 5y agoIt’s not that a consumer can’t tell a business something - I would not advocate for that either. It’s that some people are preventing competing political voices from being heard. It’s that people with power (like Young) want to use their power to shut down others. I am not sure what you mean by “fascism via capitalism” but I don’t think the word “fascist” holds much meaning anyways, and hasn’t for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_(insult) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_(insult)
- brandonmenc 5y ago> To the musicians and creators in the world, I say this: You must be able to find a better place than SPOTIFY to be the home of your art. Everyone can go self-host their audio out of an S3 bucket for a dime. Or go make a hundred dollars selling an album on Bandcamp to a fraction of the audience. There are alternatives. And you'll find out how little people will pay just to listen.
- cphoover 5y agoHosting out of an S3 buckst wholly ignores the problem of discoverability. How do listeners find your music? How do they get recommended music similar to their own taste?
- brandonmenc 5y agoThat’s kind of my point. In exchange for discoverability (and hosting) you make half a penny per stream instead of a full penny.
- sirspacey 5y agoOn point. A friend of mine is a producer for a big music studio. He said more than 80% of Spotify listeners are completely passive - not even changing tracks or adjusting the volume. The percentage that actively chooses their music? Less than 2%. It’s a vanishingly small audience and discoverability is the key feature.
- tsol 5y ago
- aksss 5y agoNeil Young and censorious tendencies are the problem, not Joe Rogan. Maybe that should be his new band name.
- ncr100 5y agoAttacking Neil Young for differentiating himself from an anti-science talk show host is itself destructive to pragmatic rationality. It's appropriate criticism of Rogan.
- aksss 5y agoBut Neil Young didn't just criticize, did he? And I'm not criticizing Neil for his opinion. Neil gave an ultimatum to Spotify to entirely de-platform Rogan over some conversations he did not like (with credentialed scientists, btw). Whether you agree with his assessment of the conversations or his actions, it certainly doesn't make Neil immune from criticism. Quite the opposite - speaking exposes one to criticism, and that's healthy. See the difference here? I'm not demanding Neil Young be censored or his content pulled. I disagree with him and can criticize his ludicrous demands for censorship, but I'll also defend his ability to say narrow-minded things. You can criticize me too. That's how open dialogue works, and it's just fine. It's not attacking Neil, you, or me (words are not violence); if anything is attacked, it's ideas only. The trouble with normalizing censorship is that inevitably one will not be counted on the side of the righteous bandwagon, but on the side of the heretical and trying to speak their truth to power. It will happen in your lifetime, guaranteed.
- jacknews 5y agoI agree, he is using economic, and political power (or at least celebrity power) to try to force censorship. IMHO the correct way to deal with free speech you don't like is more free speech.
- hindsightbias 5y agoSpotify is a monopoly.
- hammyhavoc 5y agoExplain why they are a monopoly when Tidal literally has exclusives that no other platform does.
- nradov 5y agoLet's all remember how Neil Young once claimed that you could catch AIDS if a homosexual clerk handled your groceries (obviously bigoted and wrong). https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shocked-not-the-first-artist-to-betray-her-fanbase-87622/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shock... I'm not here to defend Joe Rogan or Daniel Ek, just pointing out that it's stupid to get involved in Internet fights between celebrities. Most of it is kayfabe anyway.
- alanfranz 5y agoNot a NY fan but, that was 1985, AIDS was far from being well understood, and he backtracked from such statements. Looks like a moment of fear and anger rather than a real political orientation.