Neil Young to Spotify employees: Daniel Ek is the problem

Neil Young has taken his campaign against Spotify right to the desk of its CEO, Daniel Ek.

In a new missive from his own site, Young lambastes the Swedish tech government for Spotify’s alleged methods of underpaying artists and allowing leading podcaster Joe Rogan to advertise vaccine misinformation.

“To the musicians and creators in this planet, I say this: You have to be capable to find a superior position than Spotify to be the house of your artwork. To the employees at Spotify, I say Daniel Ek is your challenge — not Joe Rogan. Ek pulls the strings. Get out of the put right before it eats up your soul. The aims mentioned by Ek are about quantities — not artwork, not creative imagination.”

Young’s new remarks arrive two weeks just after the singer pulled his full catalog from the streaming service in protest of Rogan’s dalliances with vaccine misinformation. Younger, a polio survivor, kicked off a compact but escalating insurrection against the services as artists — including his lifelong mate Joni Mitchell, India Arie and podcasters like Brené Brown and Roxane Homosexual — withdrew their function as nicely. Many artists have likewise identified as for a boycott of Spotify for a range of reasons, such as its royalty payments to artists, which sum to small fractions of a penny for each stream.

Spotify’s stock had dropped by just about 25% so much in 2022, even just before Youthful pulled his catalog.

In response to the furor, Ek mentioned that Spotify has no pans to conclude its arrangement with Rogan. Spotify reportedly paid out him $100 million for exceptional legal rights to distribute his podcast, nevertheless the provider has eradicated dozens of “The Joe Rogan Experience” episodes in which Rogan utilised racist slurs. The assistance also has vowed to devote $100 million on written content from marginalized teams and to spot a disclaimer ahead of episodes that go over COVID-19 and vaccination.

“I want to make a person position really clear — I do not feel that silencing Joe is the respond to,” Ek wrote in a letter to Spotify workers. “We should really have distinct strains all-around written content and just take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.”

Youthful, in his assertion, also named on his boomer era to just take the direct in the struggle against local weather alter. “To infant boomers, I say that 70 per cent of your country’s economic property are in your palms in comparison with just 5 p.c for millennials,” he wrote. “You and I want to guide. In our age of Local weather Chaos, I say ditch the corporations contributing to the mass fossil fuel destruction of Earth.

“Then be absolutely free and just take the very good path.”