Spotify confirms it is removing Neil Young’s music following his Joe Rogan podcast protest

completemusicupdate.com:

Spotify “can have Rogan or Young – not both”, Neil Young declared earlier this week. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, Spotify chose Joe Rogan.Yes, Spotify has confirmed that it is complying with Neil Young’s request to remove his music from its platform.

The musician announced on Monday that he was pushing for his catalogue to be taken down in protest against the Spotify exclusive podcast the Joe Rogan Experience, which has been accused of spreading COVID misinformation.Young’s move followed an open letter from more than 250 scientists and medics earlier this month which stated that the Joe Rogan podcast has “a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic”.That letter also said that while Spotify “has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy”.

However, when confirming yesterday that it was removing Young’s music from its platform, the streaming firm insisted that it does, in fact, have “detailed content policies” in place which have resulted in it removing plenty of podcasts containing misleading information during the pandemic.A Spotify spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter: “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users.

With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic.