In Removing Neil Young’s Music, Spotify Didn’t Have to Listen to the Artist, but Did Have to Heed His Label

variety.com:

Chris Willman Music WriterHow did Neil Young get Spotify to remove his entire catalog from the service? Not by taking it up with the service directly; the service had no obligation to give his personal wishes the time of day, although the DSP is not about to put its head in the sand when an important artist is publicly going on the anti-Spotify warpath.

Rather, Young convinced his longtime label, Warner Records, to be the one to plead his case to the service, at which point there was little doubt that the rocker was going to get his way.So as the question arises of which artists might want to follow Young’s lead and ask to have their music removed, too, in light of Spotify continuing to be the home base for Joe Rogan’s campaign to provide COVID misinformation, there’s not much they can do it about unless the heads of the labels they’re signed to agree to take it to the mat with the DSP.

And not many artists may have the 500-pound-gorilla status to convince their record companies to forego the surest source of recorded-music income going into the future.

Still, there are examples of other artists who’ve done what Young has, obviously for different reasons, pre-Rogan — most notably when Taylor Swift had “1989” withheld from the service. (She eventually was satisfied enough with Spotify’s terms to put that and all her future albums back on the service.) Even as big an artist as Swift wouldn’t have been able to make that ask without her future archenemy, the Big Machine label, backing her at the time.But does that mean that any label can ask any DSP to take down any artist’s work on a whim, or without a very solid explanation?