Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Things are heating up for streaming service Spotify. Last week, Neil Young asked that his label, Columbia, pull his music from their platform. Young says that it is quite a financial hit as Spotify represents 60% of his streaming income, at the same time he says that Spotify is also the lowest resolution of his streaming music, something that he cares about: a few years ago Young tried to launch his own compression codec which was an amazing failure. Neil said that he doesn't mind his songs being off Spotify as his music sounds better everywhere else.

Apple took advantage of it by launching a playlist on Apple Music's streaming service.

Young actually first gave Spotify an ultimatum: you can have Young or Rogan: not both. They chose Rogan. Well, they had good reason: Spotify paid $100,000,000 for the exclusive rights to Rogan's podcast and back catalog, and apparently don't really care if he spews misinformation about vaccines and the Covid virus and just about everything else in the known universe in general.

Seemingly without prompting from Neil, his fans flooded Spotify's customer service in hordes and started unsubscribing. They hit the online customer service boards so hard it started crashing under the load. And the bad PR and unsubscribes drove down Spotify's stock.

Ouch.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/spotify-support-buckles-under-complaints-from-angry-neil-young-fans/


And that's no where near the end of the bad news for Spotify!

Joni Mitchell is pulling her catalog off Spotify in support of Neil Young! That, I'm sure, will cause another cascade of fans to walk.

Interestingly, Neil and Joni, both Canadians, are also both Polio survivors! Good reason to be pro-vaccine and come down very hard on vaccine and virus misinformation!

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/joni-mitchell-says-pulling-spotify-joining-neil-young-protest-rcna14048


So now Rogan has to make the apology tour circuit, or at least record a video, and make promises to "do better". He says he's a fan of Neil Young's music and doesn't want to see Neil leave Spotify. He says "he doesn’t “always get it right” on his podcast and promised to “do better” going forward". So the predictable BS. And Spotify lost $2,000,000,000 in market valuation last week. The article continues "Copping to the fact a lot of what he says on his hugely popular podcast is “not that prepared or fleshed out,” one-time self described “moron” Rogan also thanked his $100 million paymasters Spotify for “being so supportive during this time and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them.”.

Well, GEE. Considering two BILLION is greater than what they paid for him, I'm sure major stock holders and board members are seriously considering whether or not to just cut him loose and look for ways to void his contract.

Continuing the article: “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,” ... “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. I do all the scheduling myself and I don’t always get it right.”

And there's the problem in a nutshell. John Oliver had a wonderful demonstration as to that fallacy in, if I recall correctly, the first season of Last Week Tonight talking about climate change deniers bringing out "scientists" who don't believe climate change is real debating actual climate change scientists. It makes it look like it's a 50/50 split when it's far from it. So what Rogan is suggesting doesn't fix things, it spackles over the problem and makes it look like there's viable discussion to be had when the science is pretty clear-cut that Covid is indeed a virus to be taken serious, vaccines protect people and seriously reduce the illness if you get it, and fringe cures like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquin don't work. Oh, and you can't make the latter by boiling orange and grapefruit rind at home - apparently that's the latest fad. The drug is just a tad more chemically complicated.

Oliver had a fake news set set up where one scientist was debating another, then flooded the set with 98 more scientists debating the denier. Somehow I doubt Rogan is going to do something like that.

https://deadline.com/2022/01/joe-rogan-spotify-covid-controversy-neil-young-joni-mitchell-1234922830/


So fire up the popcorn popper!