Leftist Rocker Humiliated: Neil Young's Spotify Ultimatum Falls Apart in Spectacular Fashion
On Monday, rock singer Neil Young posted a letter asking his management team and record label to pull his music from Spotify over what he called “fake information about vaccines.” He did not receive the support he hoped for in response.
“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,” he wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule,” the since-deleted letter said, according to Rolling Stone.
Young took particular exception to Joe Rogan and his hugely successful podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” the letter continued. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”
To leftists like Young, “disinformation” is just a synonym for “information I don’t like.” For evidence, just look at the content with which Young apparently took issue.
While Young did not detail which episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” he found offensive, the New York Post said one of the more controversial episodes had epidemiologist Dr. Robert Malone as a guest.
According to Forbes, Malone called the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal government’s response a “mass formation psychosis” on the controversial episode. Malone said this was the same phenomenon that occurred in Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 30s.
“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” Malone explained.
Controversial as this view may be, Malone has a right to express it in the free country that is the United States. As the singer of the 1989 hit “Rockin’ in the Free World,” Young ought to know more about the freedoms Americans are afforded.
In addition, Dr. Paul Offit, the chair of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told Politifact that Malone was previously respected in the field of science.
“He’s a legitimate scientist, or at least was until he started to make these false claims,” Offit said.
That statement gives an inside glance into the mind of many leftists. They tell us we must listen to the science at all costs, but if a scientist dares to disagree with them, they suddenly revoke that scientist of his title and call his opinions “misinformation.”
When the left tells Americans to “trust the science,” they are really only referring to the particular scientific opinions that support their worldview.
Malone did not fit this definition, so Big Tech censored him. According to the New York Post, Twitter permanently banned Malone from its site, and YouTube removed the podcast episode on which he appeared as Rogan’s guest.
By Tuesday, Spotify had not given in to Young’s demands, deciding to leave the episode on its platform and allowing listeners decide for themselves whether or not they agree with Malone. Young did not like that decision, so he now faces the choice to go through with the ultimatum or stay on the platform. As of Tuesday afternoon, his music is still on Spotify.
Sadly for Young, Twitter users were quick to point out that his music is not nearly as popular as Rogan’s podcast.
“Neil Young is 76 years old and hasn’t been relevant in 40 years, but somehow he thinks he can demand Spotify choose between him and the most popular podcast in the world,” conservative author Nick Adams wrote. “Joe Rogan is going to win this battle every time.”
Neil Young is 76 years old and hasn’t been relevant in 40 years, but somehow he thinks he can demand Spotify choose between him and the most popular podcast in the world.
Joe Rogan is going to win this battle every time.
— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) January 25, 2022
Another user pointed out that Rogan’s average number of listeners per month is more than 33 times that of Young’s.
Neil Young, who has 6,057,481 monthly listeners, thinks he has the influence to bring down Joe Rogan, who has 200 million people listening monthly.
— Harrison Krank (@HarrisonKrank) January 25, 2022
In other words, Young is hardly a cash cow for the platform. To borrow the words of fellow rock icon Lynyrd Skynyrd, Spotify “don’t need him around, anyhow.”
Not only did Young underestimate the value of free speech, he also overestimated the amount of influence he had on a platform like Spotify. By all accounts, Young’s sad attempt to silence people who disagree with him was a failure.
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