Neil Young Leaves Spotify

Plus, the best soul and R&B releases out this week.

View this email online Jan. 29, 2022 by Marissa Lorusso This week, we’re covering Neil Young’s choice to remove his music from Spotify in protest of COVID misinformation — plus, the week’s best soul and R&B releases Kevin Winter/Getty Images Earlier this week, Neil Young briefly posted an open letter on his website. In it, he asked his management and record label to take his music off Spotify, in protest against the platform’s distribution of Joe Rogan’s podcast. The podcast is exclusively available on Spotify, and has widely been criticized for spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. On Wednesday, the streaming giant started removing Young’s music from the platform. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” a Spotify spokesperson wrote in a statement to NPR. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.” Spotify said it has removed “over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID,” and that it hopes Young returns to the platform soon. Young later posted two statements on his website, addressing the catalyst of his request and thanking his industry partners. He cited an open letter to Spotify signed by more than 1,000 doctors, scientists and health professionals, urging Spotify to crack down on COVID misinformation; he also noted the financial hit his team is taking by leaving the platform. On Friday evening, Joni Mitchell also decided to remove her music from Spotify. "Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives," she said in a statement on her website. "I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue." The unrest among artists goes beyond disinformation. Many are unhappy with Spotify for a variety of reasons — chief among them the platform’s royalty rate. Organizations like the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) have been pushing back against Spotify’s business practices; a couple years ago, UMAW wrote a list of demands calling for better treatment of musicians from Spotify, which has since been signed by more than 28,000 artists. Leaving the platform entirely, as Young and Mitchell did, might not feel like an option for many artists who take issue with Spotify, and many artists still feel reliant on giant streaming platforms to reach listeners. My colleague Ann Powers spoke with NBC’s NOW Tonight with Joshua Johnson about Young’s decision, and the way Spotify’s dominance impacts artists large and small. “Artists have always been at the bottom of the food chain” in the music industry, she says — which is why, no matter what the largest platforms decide to do, “independent support of your favorite artists is so important.”  Newsletter continues after sponsor message New Music It’s a big week for soul and R&B releases. On this week’s New Music Friday episode of All Songs Considered, our team of contributors chat about the official soundtrack to Questlove's documentary Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), plus new releases from Immanuel Wilkins, Samm Henshaw and more. Tanya Tagaq's music arrives with the force of a collision, taking painful experiences and transforming them into arrestingly beautiful sounds. The Inuk throat singer, composer and author’s latest album, Tongues, addresses the subjugation of Canada's Indigenous peoples; she says she makes music about that trauma "to repair the damage" – to raise awareness in the hope that change follows. Amber Mark describes her debut full-length album, Three Dimensions Deep, as "a musical journey of what questions you begin to ask yourself when you start looking to the universe for answers.” Mark “dives headfirst into the musical vastness that she experimented with on past efforts,” writes critic Kiana Fitzgerald, “taking the diverse components of her foundation and ambitiously building upon them.”  This week’s All Songs Considered New Mix features a robot love song, a former entrant to our Tiny Desk Contest and a mysterious bit of music that includes bird songs. Featuring Every once in a while, an innovator comes along that dramatically changes the music forever. Pianist and composer McCoy Tyner is in that category. In this week’s episode of Jazz Night in America, Christian McBride guides us through some of Tyner’s classic recordings as part of his own personal crate-digging journey. Silvana Estrada’s debut album, Marchita, is filled with strong percussive moments and chest-gripping rhythms. Across the album, NPR Music’s Anamaria Sayre notes, Estrada “manages to chisel concrete structures out of the ethereal feelings she was attempting to imitate using the two best tools she discovered in her workshop: her voice and the cuatro venezolano.” This week, our friends at KCRW shared a video of Courtney Barnett performing live from the Hollywood hillside backyard of the station’s music director, Anne Litt. Tiny Desk NPR Jake Xerxes Fussell collects and curates traditional, public domain folk songs and reinterprets them through his own lens. This week, he shared a Tiny Desk (home) concert from a friend’s home in Pittsboro, N.C.  Plus: This week, we also started sharing individual sets from our Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST series, including performances by Colombia’s Kombilesa Mí and Finland’s Suistamon Sähkö. One More Thing For your reading list. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Books, Pop Culture, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to NPR Music emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy