Neil Young to rejoin Spotify after Joe Rogan row

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 02:45:20 GMT
BBC News - Technology

The star had removed his music in a protest over vaccine misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast

Neil Young has said his music will return to Spotify, ending a two-year boycott over Joe Rogan's podcast.

Young said in January 2022 that Spotify represented 60% of his streaming revenue globally, which amounted to "a huge loss for [his] record company to absorb", but that he removed his music because he "Could not continue to support Spotify's life-threatening misinformation to the music loving public".

At the time of writing, Young's back catalogue has yet to be reinstated on Spotify.

Mitchell's Spotify page only contains live recordings, while Arie's music returned last year.

The Joe Rogan Experience is consistently the most-played podcast on Spotify.

In 2022, the host was forced to apologise for using racist language in early episodes of the podcast, which launched in 2009.He signed a new deal with Spotify last month, under which the programme will become available on rival services including YouTube and Apple Music.

Neil Young's squabble with Spotify is not entirely over.

"[I have] sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it," he wrote.

"Hopefully Spotify will return to Hi Res[olution] as the answer and serve all the music to everyone.

Most of Spotify's biggest rivals - including Apple, Tidal, Amazon Music and Qobuz - offer lossless audio, which is closer to CD quality than the compressed files served by Spotify.

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