Few things are sadder to witness than the spectacle of an aging hippie making a fool of himself.
The aging hippie in question this time is acclaimed singer-songwriter Neil Young, who, back in 2022, threw a tantrum when Spotify wouldn’t censor Joe Rogan for “COVID misinformation,” taking his ball to other streaming platforms.
Now, it seems, Young is realizing what little cachet his influence actually has among the youth and his typical audience of baby boomers, and has come crawling back to that dastardly streaming platform.
The famously liberal Young first announced the change Tuesday on his website, the Neil Young Archives (whose design seems permanently stuck in 1999).
In that snarky statement, he explains that, since other platforms like Apple Music and Amazon Music, in his words, “started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at SPOTIFY,” he is reconsidering his initial anti-Spotify stance.
Claiming he doesn’t want to take options away from his listeners to listen to his music on streaming platforms (all while decrying the “low res” sound of Spotify, Apple Music, etc.), he’s decided to show some consistency and return his music to Spotify.
The new environment Young is dealing with came about because Spotify and Rogan have reached a new deal to replace the four-year exclusive contract they reached in 2020, according to Fortune. Under the new deal, Rogan can also appear on rival streaming services.
Embarrassing as this might be for Young, you can’t deny the irony inherent in the situation.
As Rolling Stone Magazine reported back in 2022, Young took his music off Spotify as part of an ultimatum to the platform.
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Mainly, Young wanted to protest the vaccine “disinformation” Rogan was supposedly spreading on his podcast.
You know, ridiculous conspiracy theories like if you get vaccinated, you can still get COVID, or that COVID didn’t leak from a Chinese lab, or that cloth masks are in fact germ-ridden, disgusting pieces of virtue-signaling that never protected anyone from anything.
Oh, wait. In the intervening years since the height of the pandemic, the FBI, the World Health Organization and even COVID czar Anthony Fauci essentially straight up admitted those “conspiracy theories” weren’t so crazy after all.
Oops.
Regardless, Young gave Spotify his ultimatum in September of 2022: “They can have Rogan or Young.”
Considering Rogan has probably one of the most successful podcasts in history, and Young is an old man with the most relevance among an audience that’s not exactly adept with the latest technology, Spotify really didn’t have a hard decision.
Presumably, Young was hoping his influence would have more leverage.
But, popular as Young still is, the fact is he doesn’t have the kind of clout that would force the world’s most popular streaming platform to drop its most successful podcaster.
At least he realizes that no platform is really going to censor people like Rogan completely to his liking.
Still, it must be humiliating to come back to Spotify after so publicly taking a stance against the platform.
Well, humiliating for him, but hilarious for us.
Aging hippies have it rough in the digital age.
