by Vittoria R.
Neil Young has announced that if popular podcast host Joe Rogan remains on Spotify, he will get all his songs removed from the platform. Many people were upset by the idea of Young getting his songs removed from Spotify, because he is a hugely popular singer with an amazing catalogue of songs.
Spotify has a big business with Rogan, with him having the biggest podcast in the world with over eleven million listeners, so it is very likely that Rogan will remain on the platform. Neil Young is a person who believes strongly about many things and he wants to speak about them to the world because he wants these things to get the attention they need. In this case, he had many issues with Rogan and of course tried to make his point through Spotify.
Neil is trying to draw people’s attention to Spotify hosting Rogan and allowing him to spread anti-vax untruths. Rogan, however has even bigger influence than Young. Another reason why Spotify decided to take down Young’s songs instead of removing Joe Rogan from his position was because Rogan generates millions of dollars just because of his podcasts and because of this Spotify didn’t want Rogan to leave.
Some have argued that Young is failing to respect the fact that everyone can have the privilege to have their own opinions and discuss them, and this is the problem with him trying to silence a person using platforms (in this case, Spotify) to silence people from doing important speeches. Indeed, the idea of free speech is very important, and their are fears in the US about attempts like this to damage it.
Rogan usually tries to spread factual information rather than opinions. However, many doctors have come out and said that some information that Rogan shared about the vaccine situation was actually wrong and misleading, meaning that many people who listen to Rogan’s podcasts may have believed some misinformation that he had said.