Crosby, Stills & Nash pull music from Spotify: “We support Neil”
Crosby, Stills & Nash have joined a growing number of acts who’ve demanded that their music be removed from Spotify amid the COVID controversy involving Joe Rogan.
Members of the disbanded folk supergroup, which when joined by Neil Young were known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, have thrown their support behind Young who last month said that he wanted all his music pulled from the streaming platform.
Young took particular aim at controversial podcaster Joe Rogan – a prominent skeptic of the COVID vaccine who has a $100million exclusivity contract with Spotify – pointing out the widespread misinformation shared through his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.
Spotify complied with Young’s request, also announcing in a statement that it would add content advisories to all relevant podcast episodes.
Now, Crosby, Stills & Nash have revealed their decision to back Young (Nash had already given his support to Young).
— David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) February 2, 2022
“We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast,” the group wrote in a joint statement shared via Crosby’s social media.
“While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences. Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music — or the music we made together — to be on the same platform.”
Since Young issued his demand, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Stewart Lee and cult alternative rockers Failure have followed suit in requesting their music be pulled.
Last month hundreds of scientists and medical professionals asked Spotify to address COVID misinformation on its platform, sparked by comments made on Rogan’s podcast.
More than 270 members of the science and medical community signed the open letter, which called Rogan’s actions “not only objectionable and offensive but also medically and culturally dangerous”.
Rogan has responded to the backlash, addressing in a video “some of the controversy that’s been going on over the past few days”.
He told fans: “I don’t always get it right. I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view.
Admitting that it is a “strange responsibility to have this many views and listeners,” he promised “to do my best in the future to balance things out.”
Of Young and Mitchell’s departure from Spotify, Rogan added: “I’m very sorry that they feel that way. I most certainly don’t want that. I’m a Neil Young fan, I’ve always have been a Neil Young fan.”
