Saturday, 29 January 2022

Joni Joins

Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young by demanding that her back catalogue is removed from Spotify over Rogangate (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/29/joni-mitchell-joins-neil-young-in-demanding-spotify-remove-her-music). Mitchell is incensed by Spotify paying $100m for exclusive rights to Joe Rogan's podcast on the basis that it is used to 'spread lies'. Experts suggest that the contentious podcast is attractive to Spotify because it is a) popular and b) regularly updates its content. This appears more likely to keep 'customers' accessing the site than 'mere' pop music. New tracks are only issued periodically (creation takes time). Spotify's decision is, consequently, entirely commercial and nothing to do with their claimed 'love of music'. Predictably, it appears that only established artists, nearing 'pop heaven', are a) able and b) willing to take a stand on commercially-driven dissemination of misinformation.

1 comment:

Paul Brain said...

Predictably, Joe Rogan thinks one of his favourite songs is by Joni Mitchell. It's not! I also wish that people would recognise that, it's not only misinformation on covid vaccines that Rogan's podcast pushes (so, Spotify warning readers about this doesn't really solve things), his content on climate change is also pretty bad/ damaging to people. He seems to be basically a contrarian.

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