Keep on Streamin’ in the Free World
or How Neil Young lost to The Platform
Neil Young along with Joni Mitchell are back on Spotify…after pulling their music over two years ago.
Remember those heady days? We were young. The world was beautiful. Spotify was re-branding as an “audio company” and diving into the deep end of podcasting. They inked exclusive, multi-million dollar deals with Joe Rogan (along with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and others) in an effort to pivot and come out from under the long shadow of the Big Labels. That turned out jusssssst like it expected (lolz).
But back to Young and Mitchell. Why the return to Spotify?
Well, Joe Rogan has resigned a deal with Spotify—except that this time it’s not exclusive. Yes, that means you can hear the very-not-funny comedian “just ask questions” in the podcast app of your choice. That also means Neil and Joni had two choices: try1 and pull their music from ALL streaming platforms or …just be stubborn and keep their music off Spotify.
Checkmate for the musical monopsony that defines our streaming age.
Don’t worry, though, Neil Young is still strongly spouting beautiful poetics on the terrors of lo-fidelity audio via his must-visit Geocities-esque website feature: The Neil Young Archives Contrarian Times. Click on that link. We’ll wait and have a moment of silence for Pono.
So why is Spotify not keeping Rogan to themselves?
We’ll if you’ve been listening to us this year, Ek and Co. are getting cozier and cozier with the Majors because, you know, the pivot to casting pods didn’t work so well and there’s that damn thing called turning a profit.
This year, Spotify has already restructured their streaming payout structure. Now they’ve announced a partnership with UMG where, among other things, they’ll apparently have videos now…. not-so-coincidentally a month-plus after UMG’s on-going fallout with TikTok.
But it’s really UMG that’s been cooking here. In addition to the Spotify deal, they’ve spilled some ink with K-Pop powerhouse Hybe (everyone, quick, into the WeVerse!), expanded heavily into the MENA market and penned a….uh…manifesto with Roland about the ethics of music and AI (or something). Gotta love a corporate manifesto.
If platforms were already inescapable, what does it mean when the major labels start doubling down on them? Maybe something like Deezer just did: delete nearly 13% of all content offered on their platform or 26 million tracks because “they” deemed it “useless.” (Send flowers to your local high school indie-pop band).
But as always, there’s so much more than this.
Give our latest episode a spin to find out: Keep on Streaming in the Free World.
Listen for the secret, dollar-drenched sound of Scooter Braun and Taylor Swift burying the hatchet and stay for how we LOST THE UNIVERSE.
Department of Actual Music:
Saxon: Summer is nearly here. Get ready.
Sam: An example of 90s Neil in full flight. This song is basically nothing—unoriginal melody, pedestrian lyrics and yet…it hits so incredibly hard. Why? How? The chooglin’ mystery of Crazy Horse.
LUV,
Saxon and Sam
Most artists simply don’t have the legal right to remove their music from one streaming platform or another. Young and Mitchell actually didn’t have the right to pull their music, but instead had to work through their labels. It really underscores how copyright laws work in the States and the contractual obstacles even for artists of their stature. Also, in the case of Mitchell, four of her albums, released not on Warner, but Geffen Records, actually remained on Spotify and even saw a significant bump in streams.