Neil Young Pens Open Letter to Spotify:

The CDC spreads misinformation almost daily. Neil Young can go pound sand.

I might have been impressed if he'd yanked all his tunes and then announced to the world why he'd done it. That's called taking a stand for your principles.

This adolescent "you can't be my friend if you're friends with so-and-so" bullshit is laughable and shouldn't even be encouraged in 16 year olds. Spotify should tell Young to pack his shit based on his tantrum alone.

Neil Young’s Long Record of Spreading Scientific Misinformation
Louis Anslow, The Daily Beast
Tue, January 25, 2022, 7:32 PM

In keeping with his career-long tradition of performative activism, Neil Young demanded in a (since-deleted) open letter on his website that Spotify either remove his music or Joe Rogan’s podcast from its service—in the name of quelling COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

Spotify purchased the rights to stream the The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020 for $100 million. Critics have argued Spotify is culpable when Rogan casts doubts on vaccines, features vax-skeptical guests, or touts unproven COVID medications to his millions of listeners.

For his stance, Young is basking in praise as a principled musician willing to sacrifice his own streaming revenue in the name of science, technological progress, and public health.

This is the same Neil Young who in 2015 released an entire album, The Monsanto Years, that’s wall-to-wall songs from an anti-biotechnology point of view.

Young’s anti-GMO rhetoric helped fuel a narrative that made it easy to spread fear and distrust about COVID vaccines, most of which used novel biotechnology methods and some of which use genetic engineering.

A collective amnesia has set in amongst progressives regarding the left’s past pandering to the anti-biotechnology movement. Reactionary luddism—especially around biotechnology—was both politically correct and convenient for progressive celebrity activists. But that was in the “before times.”

The anti-GMO movement—which rose to prominence in the mid 1990s and early 2000s—attained a key legislative win in 2014 when Vermont mandated GMO labeling of food.

Activists insisted it was vital information for consumers to make informed choices, despite wide scientific agreement that they’re safe for consumption. In fact, not only were GMOs not a threat to human health, they’ve been a boon to it, much like the penicillin that has kept Neil Young alive for most of his life. Vitamin A-enriched golden rice, for example, saved millions of lives and helped prevented child blindness, when not stymied by anti-GMO activists.

The new Vermont law threatened to be a pointless and impractical nightmare for food manufacturers, so trade groups sued the state. But with Big Business fighting the mandate, its repeal was easily framed by the anti-GMO movement as an affront to consumer safety and democracy. This framing was eagerly adopted by progressive politicians and amplified by the mainstream media.

As the case garnered coverage, the anti-GMO crowd was re-energized once more. And Neil Young seized the moment, releasing The Monsanto Years and embarking on a tour of the same name. At one pre-show press conference, accompanied by Vermont’s then-Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, Young pledged $100,000 to the legal case defending the GMO labeling law.

Another guest at the conference was Shiva Ayyadurai, a technologist who’d published dubious research showing GMOs were dangerous. Ayyadurai would in 2018 run as a Republican (and later, as an independent), against Elizabeth Warren for a Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat. (Warren opposed an overly strict federal GMO labeling bill.) Ayyadurai has since pivoted to spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation—it was his tweet that started the #firefauci hashtag, when then-President Donald Trump retweeted it.

Young’s Monsanto album release and media tour doubled as activism—amplifying misinformation about GMOs to large mainstream audiences. He released a short anti-GMO documentary aptly named Seeding Fear. Most notably, and ridiculously, was an appearance on The Late Show with Steven Colbert.



Colbert asked Young about the scientific evidence showing GMOs were safe. But Young dismissed it out of hand, retorting: “That must be a Monsanto study that didn’t notice the terrible diseases and all of the things that are happening.” Then he pivoted to citing overzealous anti-GMO regulations in the EU as if it was scientific proof of anything.

The cringey bit concluded when a man dressed as a GMO corn cob appeared, asking Young, “I was born this way, why do you have to label me?”

Young replied, “I don’t normally like to label things but you’re so dangerous, and you’re dangerous to me personally and my family, and the rest of the planet.” Eventually the corn grew so angry it exploded in a shower of popcorn, which Young implored Colbert not to touch.

Trade groups successfully lobbied Congress to replace any state by state labeling laws with a federal law—to avoid having to manufacture different packaging for every jurisdiction. President Barack Obama signed the law in 2016 and, coincidentally, it went partially into effect just one day after the first case of COVID-19 was discovered in China: January 1, 2020.

The anti-biotechnology movement, until very recently treated with kid gloves by late night comic and taken seriously by Democratic politicians looking to mobilize voters, was about to become a dangerous liability.

Amplified by Young, the anti-biotechnology movement helped lay the foundations of the anti-COVID vaccine movement today, giving it an arsenal of misinformation to be repurposed, mainstream articles to be referenced, and misguided laws to be held up as proof of inherent dangers posed by safe technologies.

COVID vaccines containing a genetically-engineered virus were framed by skeptics as risky, simply by pointing to the way regulators and media outlets had treated GMOs, often at the behest of radical activists like Young.

Non-GMO vaccines—using mRNA—dealt with accusations that they “turn people into GMOs,” an incoherent notion that had to be denied by multiple health agencies across the world.

One of the main arguments in favor of GMO labeling served as a precedent for arguments against vaccine mandates: “The science says they’re safe, but people should be able to choose for themselves”—which implies that they might, in fact, not be safe.

The current mainstream narrative is that ignorant opposition to modernity and biotechnology is strictly a phenomenon on the populist right—amplified by the new corporate technological boogeymen: big tech and social media. The populist right, for its part, is happily adopting this narrative. But technological Luddism knows no party.

Neil Young’s got a legitimate case in criticizing Spotify for amplifying Joe Rogan’s biotech misinformation. But first, he should atone for his own role in seeding COVID vaccine skepticism.

Monsanto is as evil as it gets.
GMOs absolutely should be labeled if they're going into our food.
Experimental mRNA "vaccines" deserve skepticism.
...and Young is being a childish douchenozzle.

None of those things are mutually exclusive.

That name sounds familiar... didn't he make a record back in the 60's or something?

Spotify removes Neil Young after he calls for Joe Rogan to go
Published 3 hours ago | BBC

Spotify has begun removing music by Neil Young after the rock star called for the streaming platform to choose between him and podcaster Joe Rogan.

Accusing him of Covid misinformation, Young told Spotify this week: "They can have Rogan or Young. Not both."

Rogan has been criticised for interviewing an infectious disease specialist who opposes Covid-19 vaccines for children.

Spotify said it "regrets" the move and hopes he returns to the platform soon.

The Canadian-American musician behind classic rock hits such as Harvest Moon and Heart of Gold publicly accused Spotify on Monday of "spreading fake information about vaccines - potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them".

In another statement posted to his website on Wednesday he called the music streaming giant "the home of life-threatening Covid misinformation", adding: "Lies being sold for money."

He also thanked his record label, Warner Brothers-owned Reprise Records, for supporting his decision, saying that around 60% of all of his streamed music comes from Spotify listeners.

"Thank you Warner Brothers for standing with me and taking the hit - losing 60% of my worldwide streaming income in the name of Truth," he wrote online.

Spotify reportedly paid $100m (£75m) for rights to The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2020. The programme is the top podcast on Spotify, and is reportedly downloaded almost 200 million times a month.

On Wednesday, Spotify replied to the singer's ultimatum.

"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," it said.

"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."

Spotify has more than 300m monthly listeners, including over 170m who pay for a subscription to the service.

Young is not the first person to raise concerns over the content of Rogan's podcast.

Last month, a group of doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter to Spotify citing Rogan's "concerning history" in discussing the Covid-19 pandemic.

The letter referred to an episode in which Rogan interviewed Dr Robert Malone, a virologist who worked on early research into the mRNA technology behind several Covid-19 vaccines, but who is now critical of the treatments.

Fact-checkers have fiercely disputed Dr Malone's claim that vaccination puts people who have already had Covid-19 at higher risk.

He also said world leaders had hypnotised the public into supporting vaccines, drawing parallels between the pandemic and the rise of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany. Twitter banned Dr Malone, accusing him of spreading misinformation.

Last year, before that episode was recorded, Rogan clarified that he was "not an anti-vax person".

"I believe they're safe and encourage many people to take them," he said, while refusing to back down on claims that young people did not "need" the vaccine.

Rogan has also been criticised in the US for touting the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a treatment for coronavirus.

Several artists, including UK psychedelic musician Darren Sangita and German techno producer Skee Mask, have pulled their music from Spotify, spearheading a small "Boycott Spotify" movement.

As for Young, he has removed his songs from Spotify before - quitting the service, along with Apple Music and other streaming sites, in 2015 after stating their audio quality was not good enough.

A southern man don't need him around anyhow

Spotify Loses $2 Billion as Stock Plummets After Neil Young’s Joe Rogan Protest
Antoinette Siu
Sat, January 29, 2022, 11:21 AM

Spotify’s market value dropped more than $2 billion in the last few days after Neil Young pulled his music over Joe Rogan’s podcast. Shares have tumbled around 12% from where it closed last week.

Young had pulled his songs from the music platform on Wednesday because, he said, Spotify had become “a very damaging force” in spreading misinformation about COVID. Young referred to an open letter from medical professionals earlier this month that urged Spotify to crack down on COVID misinformation on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

”They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,“ the music legend wrote in a now-deleted letter that was provided to Rolling Stone.

“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”

Spotify shares dropped around 6% after Wednesday. While much of the market has been down in the last week, Spotify’s losses were more significant following criticism over Rogan’s show and Young’s move.

This is not the first time critics have gone after “The Joe Rogan Experience” for its controversial slants of news and politics, especially with the pandemic. The podcast moved off of Apple in September 2020 in a deal estimated to be worth $100 million, then it became a Spotify exclusive later that year.

Earlier this month, a group of more than 260 health and science professionals called on Spotify to take action against “mass-information events” on its app, singling out Rogan for repeatedly spreading misleading and false claims on his show. The show has promoted the use of ivermectin to treat COVID and discouraged vaccination in young people.

And it’s also not the first time Young has stripped the streamer of his music. In 2019, he told Rolling Stone that he had removed most of his music from Spotify several years earlier because he felt the sound quality wasn’t good, but he later relented.

Peter Frampton showed his support of Young’s decision Thursday, tweeting, “Good for you Neil. I’ve always been an Apple guy for streaming. No Joe Rogan for me thank you! @neilyoung@SpotifyUSA.” And on Friday, Joni Mitchell said in a statement on her website that she will also pull her music from Spotify in protest and “stand in solidarity” with Neil Young.

“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell said.

Speaking as someone who doesn't often listen to Rogan, never listens to Young, Frampton, or Mitchell and doesn't even have a Spotify account I can proclaim with complete conviction from the bottom of my shriveled black heart:


Meh.

Neil Young... Joni Mitchell... Peter Frampton... aren't these the same liberals from the 60's who used to say "Tune in Turn on Drop out Right on" and "Hell no we won't go" and stuff like that... now they're protesting in support of the government and the system. Some people can never make up their minds I guess.

Yoko Ono is now threatening to add her music to Spotify if they don't drop Joe Rogan.

The corporate media and its apologists want you to dislike and never listen to Rogan because he isn't reading from the establishment script which is exactly why the corporate media is wheezing out a death rattle and Rogan has millions upon millions of listeners.

The only people still acting like corporate media isn't a pile of burning garbage are the corporate media itself and the pencewits who still rely on it for their misinformation.