I'm sure Mr Young knew that this would be the end result and that it would be a hit to his pocketbook in taking the stand he did. I respect his integrity for doing so and hope other artists do the same.
Seems unlikely to me, this plausibly increases the value more than it decreases the value. A ton of press, driving people to support him, driving direct sales (e.g. https://neilyoungarchives.com/account?screen=plans). Increases the potential audience from "people who like his music" to "people who dislike Joe Rogan (or like his music)". Etc.
It could turn out poorly for him, but even from a purely business perspective it's not an obviously bad decision.
> Young, 76, said Spotify accounted for 60% of the streaming of his music to listeners around the world. The removal is "a huge loss for my record company to absorb," he said.
So, at least according to Young, the move is "a huge loss".
Or he might have miscalculated his clout. Or indeed he may have just wanted to withdraw his catalogue as protest —if the latter, I think it’s misguided idea. Lots of musicians or artists can have diametric opinions to each other. It would be a disservice if they all started dictating who could be on the same service as them. What next, only allow streaming to people who hold my views on X, Y or Z?
I don't think he miscalculated anything. We're all talking about it, and he publicly voted with his money. I doubt he believed Spotify would drop Rogan the next day or anything.
You're missing an important distinction. Spotify isn't just letting people stream Rogan, they're actively producing the content.
It surprises me that some people are talking about this as if Neil Young really thought he would win this fight. He’s been in the business for a while. I highly doubt he’d be naive enough to think Spotify would capitulate.
I guess he could have simply said he was removing his music because he disagreed with Spotify’s business practices, but this way, Spotify owns the action of removing his music from their service. NY didn’t walk out, Spotify chose Rogan over him.
How come? If I'm a proponent of cause A, and I participate in a group with a member who is anti-A, it's actually against my fundamental beliefs to be associated with that person. In this case, I can propose a solution to this: either I go, or he goes. I benefit from either result, since my beliefs in A are more important to me than the group (even if the group is still a very important part of my life).
Nobody said anything about not allowing people to dictate who can distribute their art. Why must we take every "you shouldn't do this" statement to mean "you shouldn't be allowed to do this?"
> Moral rights are the rights of an artist to claim authorship in their work (IE: Right to attribution), object to offensive or derogatory treatment of the work, including destroying it.
> Though moral rights are a part of the Berne Convention, of which the U.S. is a signatory, the U.S. never fully implemented moral rights into their code. Instead, it passed the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) a law that extended moral rights to an extremely limited subset of visual works.
> As with fair use, this limited view on moral rights is another uniquely American element. Copyright holders in the EU enjoy much broader more rights. However, this is true in much of the rest of the world as well.
Perhaps rather, if you pull up stakes every time someone else on the same platform announces they prefer grape jelly over strawberry (fucking animals!), pretty soon you're going to have N platforms for N people. Which I suppose is one possible Fediverse end-game: millions of individual platforms, federating and un-federating on a daily basis as people discover that someone they thought was cool actually voted for McCain in 2008.
Yes, if you carefully pare away every bit of context then it's true that nothing makes any sense.
In actual real life though it's not the difference between flavors of goddamn jelly, it's a serious moral concern for a lot of people.
Similarly it's not even a matter of forgiveness, or permanently staining someone's reputation over one action many years ago. These actions are ongoing and Rogan hasn't repented of them. If you believe they cause harm then you probably also believe they are currently causing ongoing harm. Which is a situation with different considerations than "someone did something bad a long time ago".
He doesn’t want his music to be on a platform that is bankrolling someone who helps spread misinformation about vaccines. He suffered from Polio as a kid so this is something that means something on a personal level. That doesn’t seem that misguided to me.
And people have a right not to want to do business with a company that gave a hundred million dollars to someone producing misinformation.
Pretending this is a case of "spotify has an open platform that people can come speak on" is disingenuous, Spotify went out of their way and spent a ton of money to get the content he disapproves of on their platform.
(Comment aimed at a number of comments in this thread, including but not limited to the one I replied to)
Turns out it was a Southern Man from Alabama who told him it was he, the Old Man, who had the heart of gold, and he was just searching for it in the wrong place. After all, it was After the Gold Rush and he had it all along.
If you want to be on Spotify's platform, you have to play by their rules, 100%. There is/was a number of artist whose work was not on Spotify for whatever reason.
They specifically said so in their statement: "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." [0]
They just won't touch their golden goose.
And remember, they're not just not removing Rogan's misinformation, they're producing and promoting it.
No, he hated Spotify already because they only had lower-quality versions of his music. He wanted to take his music off Spotify already, he just used the Joe Rogan issue as virtue signaling to cause a commotion.
It is incomprehensible for me to understand why people call this "principled". It is bullying in the words of President Obama - "That's not activism" [1]. If Neil wants to go and debate, he should show up on JRE and put his points forth.
Pulling one's business from sources you disagree with is 100% activism. Hell, it's the entire idea behind economic sanctions.
Going to talk to Joe Rogan isn't going to change anyone's mind, and is just providing him more attention and validating him as a 'platform', and thus perpetuating the problem.
I completely disagree. Activism is "Pull", not "Push". You need to put your points forth so as to rally people behind you, not beat them into submission.
This is just wokeness and cancel culture. It is top-down attempt for censorship, absolutely not activism.
> He wrote: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” [1]
So he wanted Joe Rogan removed. It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform". He insisted to remove Joe Rogan and threatened. That, in my book, ain't activism. It is bullying and exploiting his position in the industry.
I would be fine with Gandhi's approach towards boycotts (Salt March).
That might be your personal definition of activism but it isn’t any accepted one.
Think about the anti-apartheid boycott movement against South Africa. Effectively they said “you can have Apartheid or you can have us buy your products”. Was that bullying? Was that exploiting a position? In what world was it not activism?
(as a side note the idea that an artist the likes of Neil Young even has the capability of bullying an company like Spotify is kind of funny in and of itself. The power dynamic between the two skews very, very heavily towards Spotify)
> It wasn't "I'll leave because I disagree with people on this platform"
?!? That’s exactly what it was. According to the source you just posted that’s exactly what he did. He asked for his music to be removed, he did not issue an ultimatum. You’re quoting a rhetorical flourish he made and ignoring his actions.
He didn't threaten and wait until they blinked; he wasn't trying to bully them. It was simply "I do not want to do business with you while you support and provide a platform to that guy".
His letter -specifically asked his music be removed-, with that explanation as to why.
Your book is wrong. No one just boycotts something without also explaining why to the thing being boycotted; that -might- achieve in the business or whatever folding, if enough people do it, but it won't lead to them changing. -That- would be "cancel culture"; we won't tell you what you can do to fix things, we're just going to complain that you did a thing, take our ball, and go home.
If the goal is to have them change, not to kill them, you have to tell them what they need to change.
What? How? Neil decided on his own to pull all his music. No one bullied him, no one called him out on twitter, etc. This isn't even a 'woke' issue. Neil decided he doesn't want to share a platform with disinformation spreaders, period.
Seriously. He's playing the culture war and identity politics game for his own benefit.
People who are downvoting you think it is "principled" to bully an open platform to moderate content and censor voices inconsistent with their own beliefs. Insanity.
thank you, engage in discussion before threatening to take your ball and go home. I think it's a little dramatic to call it bullying, but from the other side it looks pretty pathetic.
Joe Rogan has changed his stance on a lot of topics over the years. And his listeners aren't all idiots. Some people, despite what we occasionally see here, and what some believe by default, are still open to hear whatever good points might be made. Everyone has an agenda, but it's not always diametrically opposed to what's decent.
In the past when I listened to his show, he's said some stupid shit, but he's also admitted being wrong, and agreed to hold conversations with people he disliked or disagreed with, and was able to take something positive from it.
But sure, people can think he's harmful to society, but I think that kind of grandstanding/absolutism is pretty harmful in itself.
And as a final note I guess I just want to know why people are still here if they think discussion won't change the mind of Rogan, or his listenership, or other people in general. Is it that you think his listeners are uniquely stupid or malevolent? Is the idea that at a certain point, shouting opinions you like and hiding/distracting from opinions you don't is the only way?
