Neil Young: ‘If You Support Spotify, You are Destroying an Art Form’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Neil Young railed against Spotify in a new blog post published on the Neil Young Archives. The company announced earlier this week that it was pulling Young’s music off its platform after the musician demanded Jan 24.

to be removed, citing the streaming service’s distribution partnership with Joe Rogan and accusing Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” of spreading false information regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.

Young stressed in his latest post that he “supports free speech” and “has never been in favor of censorship.”“Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information,” Young writes. “I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.” Young then condemned Spotify for cutting the quality of the music it streams, adding, “Amazon, Apple Music and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty, degraded and neutered sound of Spotify.

If you support Spotify, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. Spotify plays the artists’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.”“Switch to one of the alternatives, companies that support the arts,” Young adds. “Real sound is available there… You just have to leave Spotify and go to a place that truly cares about music quality.”In his original post published after Spotify announced it was pulling his music, Young wrote, “Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.