Adrastos, COVID-19, Fog Of History, Music, Television

Out, Damned Spotify, Out

The featured image is Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as the Macbeths in a 1955 stage production of the Cursed Scottish Play.

The post title is a play on one of the most famous lines spoken by Lady Macbeth.

I suspect this history lesson will be lost on Joe Rogan and the tech bros who run the Swedish streamer Spotify.

I think Neil Young and Joni Mitchell will get it.

Unless you’ve living in a van by the river, you’ve heard of Neil Young demanding the Swedish meatballs at Spotify choose between him or Rogan. They chose Joe Rogan’s bro podcast. I don’t listen to that shit, but Rogan is an anti-vaxxer, horse drug booster, and all-around asshole.

Spotify and Rogan responded: Freedom, man. Content warning, man. Freedom, man.

I’ve been using Spotify off and on for years. I just made that off and dumped my paid subscription.

I have not, however, ditched my free Spotify account because I don’t want all those Odds & Sods embeds to vanish. In the future, I’ll stick to other services. Amazon and Apple pay artists better for the right to stream their music even though it’s still a pittance

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Napster? They’re still around?  I thought they’d taken a dirt nap after their battle with Metallica. You learn something new every day.

The reason Spotify sided with Rogan over Young is that it’s a tech company, not a music company. I bet they’re not even fans of the hilarious sitcom on which Joe Rogan had hair:

Not that Joe played a normal guy on that Nineties show: he was a deranged handyman as opposed to a deranged podcaster.

Has anyone else noticed Rogan’s resemblance to Joe Gorga, husband of Melissa and brother of Tre on The Real Housewives of New Jersey?

Neil Young has been called Quixotic for this assault on Spotify. It’s unlikely to result in Rogan’s removal but if enough subscribers stop paying, it hits Spotify where it hurts: in the wallet. It could, however, be like the refrain in Ambulance Blues and just be “pissin’ in the wind”

That was Neil and REM at the Bridge School benefit in 1998. They talked him into performing that opus for the first time in over 20 years. It’s back in the Young repertoire thanks to REM.

Back to the Spotify spat. Here’s one reason Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are so adamant about vaccines:

The polio vaccine eradicated that debilitating disease. There were no anti-vaxxers in the streets protesting.

It’s refreshing that two Woodstock-era icons like Neil and Joni have chosen to walk a different path than their generational peers Eric Clapton and Van Morrison. Hell. Joni is *almost* as irascible as Van the Man.

It’s going to be fun to watch this controversy play out. Anything that makes Spotify and Joe Rogan squirm is fine with me.

Neil Young and Joe Rogan have different interpretations of the word freedom. Rogan ignores the consequences of his words; Young takes responsibility for his.

Speaking of freedom, the last word goes to Neil Young followed by Joni Mitchell:

Freedom, man.

One thought on “Out, Damned Spotify, Out”

  1. Looks like we’re simpatico again! BTW, I’m a direct descendent of Macduff but the ancestors all moved to the south of England,changed the named to Duff, and took up the Duchy of Fife as granted for the Macduff who did that original deed. It’s a defunct duchy now but most of us have a lot of the family silver with the crest all over it. I always get a good kick out of hearing some on say “lead on MacDuff” to which I always respond “who me?”

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