Spotify, based in Sweden, has become the world's largest music streaming service, but that may be about to change.
In 2020, Spotify signed Joe Rogan to a $100 million contract in an attempt to dominate the podcast world as well. Rogan has become a super spreader of COVID disinformation. Nearly 11 million people listen to each episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) and hear his disinformation and falsehoods.
In January 2022, a group of 270 scientists, physicians, professors, doctors, and healthcare workers sent an open letter to Spotify about Rogan's COVID disinformation.
Then, rocker Neil Young (who had been averaging about 6 million listeners a month on Spotify) and his friend, legend Joni Mitchell (both childhood polio survivors and vaccine proponents), pulled their music from Spotify to protest Rogan's lethal COVID disinformation. Peter Frampton offered his support. Other major artists are expected to follow in the coming days.
This week, thousands of Spotify subscribers deleted Spotify. So much so that their website is overwhelmed with requests.
Today, ThisSmallPlanet calls on all artists and subscribers to leave Spotify to protest Joe Rogan and COVID disinformation super spreading.
An Open Letter to Spotify: A call from the global scientific and medical communities to implement a misinformation policy
On Dec. 31, 2021, the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), a Spotify-exclusive podcast, uploaded a highly controversial episode featuring guest Dr. Robert Malone (#1757). The episode has been criticized for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and the JRE has a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals. JRE #1757 is not the only transgression to occur on the Spotify platform, but a relevant example of the platform’s failure to mitigate the damage it is causing.
We are a coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience and we are calling on Spotify to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform. With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Though Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. In episode #1757, Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Dr. Malone used the JRE platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have “hypnotized” the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited. Notably, Dr. Malone is one of two recent JRE guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust. These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.
The average age of JRE listeners is 24 years old and according to data from Washington State, unvaccinated 12-34 year olds are 12 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who are fully vaccinated. Dr. Malone’s interview has reached many tens of millions of listeners vulnerable to predatory medical misinformation. Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications. As scientists, we face backlash and resistance as the public grows to distrust our research and expertise. As educators and science communicators, we are tasked with repairing the public’s damaged understanding of science and medicine. As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast.
This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform. We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.
Open Letter from Neil Young to SPOTIFY
IN THE NAME OF TRUTH
SPOTIFY has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.
I first learned of this problem by reading that 200 plus doctors had joined forces, taking on the dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in SPOTIFY programming.
Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth.
These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.
All my music is available on SPOTIFY, being sold to these young people, people who believe what they are hearing because it is on SPOTIFY, and people like me are supporting SPOTIFY by presenting my music there.
I realized I could not continue to support SPOTIFY’s life threatening misinformation to the music loving public.
Before I told my friends at Warner Bros about my desire to leave the SPOTIFY platform, I was reminded by my own legal forces that contractually I did not have the control of my music to do that. I announced I was leaving anyway, because I knew I was. I was prepared to do all I could and more just to make sure that happened.
I want to thank my truly great and supportive record company Warner Brothers - Reprise Records, for standing with me in my decision to pull all my music from Spotify. Thank You!
Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world, almost every record I have ever released is available - my life’s music - a huge loss for my record company to absorb. Yet my friends at WARNER BROTHERS REPRISE stood with me, recognizing the threat the COVID misinformation on SPOTIFY posed to the world - particularly for our young people who think everything they hear on SPOTIFY is true. Unfortunately it is not.
Thank you WARNER BROTHERS for standing with me and taking the hit - losing 60% of my world wide streaming income in the name of Truth.
SPOTIFY has become the home of life threatening COVID misinformation. Lies being sold for money.
There is an upside for my listeners, people who may be listening to the 60 years of music I have made in my life so far. It is this: many other platforms, Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz, to name a few, present my music today in all its High-Resolution glory - the way it is intended to be heard, while unfortunately SPOTIFY continues to peddle the lowest quality in music reproduction. So much for art. But now that is in the past for me. Soon my music will live on in a better place.
I truly want to thank the many, many people who have reached out to me thanking me for taking this position - people who are health professionals on the front lines, people who have lost loved ones to COVID or who are worried for their own children and families. I have never felt so much love coming from so many.
I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the SPOTIFY platform and stop supporting SPOTIFY’s deadly misinformation about COVID.
In the name of Truth.
neil young
Shares of Spotify on Nasdaq were down 12% amid the protests, with the San Francisco Chronicle and others estimating this represented a $2 - $4 billion loss in market capitalization...
Open Letter To Spotify From Neil Young, January 28, 2022.
When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better.
Digital music has been with us about 40 years now. Digital, rather than reproducing copies of the music as we did back in the analog day, reconstitutes it from 1s and 0s and plays back data that you hear as music.
This allows business people like those who run SPOTIFY to cut the quality right down to 5% of the music’s content. It’s just math. It’s easy to do that with digital, thus allowing more songs and less music to stream faster. That’s because 95% is missing. Thats what SPOTIFY the Tech company does. SPOTIFY then sells you the downgraded music.
When I started everyone got to hear all the music. 100%.
AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.
AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz now deliver the real thing. SPOTIFY is ripping you off and has been since day 1. No goosebumps from SPOTIFY sound!
Switch to one of the alternatives - companies that support the arts. Real sound is available there. AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz You just have to leave Spotify and go to a new place that truly cares about music quality.
I met Daniel Ek when he started SPOTIFY. it sounded to me like he was really going to be getting into it. That was a long time ago. I wonder what happened.
When I left Spotify, I felt better.
I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.
As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else.
love earth
be well
neil
In October 2021, ThisSmallPlanet.com published this:
ThisSmallPlanet.com Calls For Boycott Against COVID Deniers Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Morrissey, and Joe Rogan
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