Neil Young Photo: Gary Miller
One of these days, Neil Young is gonna sit down and write a long letter to all the good friends he’s known and tell them he’s returning to Spotify. That day is today. Roughly two years after ditching the streaming giant due to the $200 million the company poured into The Joe Rogan Experience’s disinformation machine, Young posted on his website that he’ll be back on Spotify, even though they don’t do hi-res audio. Ultimately, the reason is pretty simple: The other guys are just as bad.
“My decision comes as other music services, Apple, Amazon, Qobuz, Tidal, all high res, have started serving the same disinformation podcast I had opposed at Spotify,” Young wrote on his website, The Neil Young Archives. “Because I cannot leave all those services like I did Spotify, because my music would have no streaming outlet to music lovers at all, I have returned.”
Apple, which trumpeted its near-exclusivity to Young’s catalog and trolled Spotify over it, currently hosts music by known anti-vax conspiracy theorists and anti-semites, including new albums from Van Morrison and Kanye West, who later apologized for threatening to go DEFCON 3 on Jewish people before doing a solid year of nauseating bigotry. Additionally, Apple’s podcast platform also hosts The Joe Rogan Experience, which frequently tops the company’s charts despite being a “Spotify exclusive.”
Young didn’t take this decision lightly, calling Spotify “the #1 streamer of low-res music in the world […] where you get less quality than we made.” After conceding that, yeah, boycotting Spotify is a bit hypocritical when his music is available on Amazon, Young began pressing Spotify to “turn on Hi Res.” He also briefly broke into what can only be described as a brief Rob Schneider impression and wrote, “Spotify, you can do it! Really be #1 in all ways […] Start with a limited Hi res tier and build from there.” As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em in the low-res stink pit of streaming. We look forward to Neil Young appearing on everyone’s Spotify Unwrapped analytics later this year.