It seems as though it is an exceedingly long time since Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify* in protest to “The Joe Rogan Experience’s” position vis-à-vis COVID information. It has been less than a year. He was joined by India.Arie, Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, and his former bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash last January/February. Think of those musicians what you will, but odds are Daniel Ek wasn’t shaking clogs with the departure.
At the time, CS&N collectively put out a statement:
“We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast. While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences. Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music — or the music we made together — to be on the same platform.”
That is in keeping with the peace, love and understanding ethos that characterized many musicians in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, when there were positions taken about the war in Vietnam and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They unapologetically took a stand.
Fast forward a few months, and here is David Crosby explaining why his music was back on the streaming service:
“I don’t own it now and the people who do are in business to make money.”
In March 2022—a month after the statement of with a noble stance—David Crosby sold his catalog to Iconic Artists Group. Arguably, Crosby became an iconic artist as a result of his worldview and expression thereof. (Yes, there is his talent, too.)
But his explanation at the time was that he, then 80, was, like other musicians, not in a position to tour (in March 2022 there were 15,584 deaths related to COVID, or about 6% of the deaths in the U.S. that month.).
And like other people in general, Crosby had (and has) a need to pay the bills, and if he was going to be able to get someone to buy his work, then so be it.
The point here is not to pick on Crosby. At least he and his colleagues made a public stance, albeit ultimately a rather limp one.
