Last week, Neil Young posted on his website that he wanted his music taken down from Spotify. The 76-year-old rocker took issue with certain episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” for “spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe this disinformation spread by them. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he wrote. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan responded to the controversy over the weekend in an Instagram post. “These podcasts are very strange because they’re just conversations,” he said. “And oftentimes I have no idea what I’m going to talk about until I sit down and talk to people. And that’s why some of my ideas are not that prepared or fleshed out because I’m literally having them in real-time, but I do my best, and they’re just conversations. And I think that’s also the appeal of the show. It’s one of the things that makes it interesting. So I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much from it.”
Rogan continued saying, “I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist. I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them whenever I get something wrong. I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth.” Rogan illustrated that he has had numerous experts on both sides of the issue on his show, but in the future he hopes to provide a point-counterpoint on hot-button topics in a more timely fashion. “If there’s anything that I’ve done that I could do better, it’s having more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones,” he said. “I would most certainly be open to doing that. And I would like to talk to some people who have differing opinions on the podcasts in the future.”
Following his exit from Spotify, Young was joined by Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren, who also pulled their music from the service. Young now has partnered with Amazon Music to give out free four-month trial subscriptions for listeners that want to stream his music. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also announced the service would start adding a disclaimer to podcasts that are potentially controversial.
