I’ve been mulling over what to do for a (more) ethical music streaming service for a while, largely writing about it here after already noodling on it for some time. Sadly, that shot didn’t work out too well.
This week Spotify was cast into poor light yet again when podcast powerhouse Joe Rogan, who is signed exclusively to Spotify for a tidy $100 million, interviewed/gave platform to Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who’s been banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation about vaccines. Malone also compared U.S. vaccine and mask mandates to the Nazi rise to power.
Which just makes sense. There are clear parallels between a country becoming a juggernaut with intent to eradicate entire races and take over the world, and one producing vaccines in record time to save countless lives around the globe and strongly advising wearing masks to keep each other safe.
The similarities are striking.
Provided that you’re… y’know… out of your goddamn mind.
YouTube took down video of the episode citing it violated their terms of not spreading misinfomation. As broadcasters should. Freedom of speech is one thing. But when that speech will almost certainly cost lives of those caught up in a cult of personality, it behooves a broadcaster (who may, after all, arguably be taken to court as being in part responsible for leading to those lives being lost) to step in and yoink it.
Spotify, meanwhile, didn’t do anything about the episode. They pointed out that they have removed some 200,000 other podcast episodes from their platform that contained misinformation, yet sat on their hands when it came to Rogan doing the same thing. That fact riled Neil Young enough to demand that if Spotify wasn’t going to mitigate the spread of vaccine misinformation by pulling that Rogan eposide, they were to remove all of his songs from their platform. Joni Mitchell quickly joined Young’s boycott.
While some other singer/songwriters have followed Young’s lead (Margo Price and Kate Nash for starters), I’m a little surprised that certain big bands haven’t done the same. Groups like Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, and Beastie Boys (to name just a few) sing and seem to be about social justice and commentary and/or anti-corporate greed, but have thus far not weighed in on the issue.
And of course it is entirely ignoring what’s right in favour of the all-mighty dollar that’s driving this whole thing.
Spotify not removing Rogan’s episode just may, possibly, perhaps have something to do with Rogan’s estimated eight-figure audience numbers officially pushing Spotify past Apple in 2021 as having the largest podcast audience in the United States. That ain’t nothing.
Wanting to appear to do the right thing (taking down those 200,000 other episodes from lesser known podcasts) but wanting money even more, the only way Spotify would dare take down Rogan’s controversial episode would be if they knew that act would end up with them losing less money from it. I guarantee there was emergency number-crunching happening where they calculated the gain/loss potential of pulling Rogan’s episode vs. riding out the social backlash from not pulling it. Not having just Neil Young isn’t as big a fiscal loss to them as losing Rogan would be (if Rogan left over the episode being taken down). Add in Joni Mitchell leaving and they’re still in the black. Then toss in estimations how many subscribers they’ll lose over the controversy… add all that up and then let the best fiscal choice lead their (in)actions.
To my point earlier, more bands walking out in support of Young’s boycott would only spur Spotify on to (at least appear to) do the right, socially responsible thing, even if it was actually only guided by less loss of income.
As it is, Spotify bigwigs made their choice to stick with broadcasting medical misinformation during a fucking pandemic, and so I’m finally, fully, once and for all done with them.
I did another quick blitz of music streaming services, and the French company Deezer kept popping up in positive reviews.
Do an online search for “Deezer controversy” and the only things you’ll find are 1) a rough patch 11 years ago when investors ousted the Deezer CEO for not driving the company to perform as well as hoped financially, 2) a reference to Deezer’s subscribers compared to Spotify’s in specific regard to this Joe Rogan shitstorm, and 3) lyrics to the Prince song Controversy (as heard on Deezer).
I’ll take that.
Deezer’s UI looks pretty slick, its family plan (for six people in total) is cheaper than Spotify’s family plan, and they even offer to copy over all your playlists and songs from Spotify so you can start your Deezer experience with the music you’ve already put in the time and effort to curating for yourself.
Oh, and they also pay musicians about twice what Spotify does per streamed song.
I call that wins all around.
Deezer, a warm welcome. May your stay be long and blissfully uncontroversial.
Spotify, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your long overdue exit.