Neil Young's music is returning to Spotify because the Joe Rogan podcast is returning to Apple and Amazon, and Young ain't no hypocrite.
Nor is he bold enough to remove his music from every major streaming service. But maybe Spotify could meet him halfway and at least start making music available in some kind of higher quality format, because disinformation is bad, but shitty audio is even worse.
Or, in Young's words, "Spotify, the number one streamer of low res music in the world - Spotify, where you get less quality than we made - will now be home to my music again. My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify. I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all".
Young's music was removed from Spotify in 2022 after the musician accused the then Spotify-exclusive Joe Rogan Experience podcast of allowing its guests to spread COVID conspiracy theories unchallenged.
“Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy", he wrote in a blog post at the time. "I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both”.
That post resulted in a mini-scandal for Spotify, though it stood by its most famous podcaster while also promising to do more to combat misinformation on its platform.
The streaming service then renewed its megabucks deal with Rogan earlier this year, though his podcast will no longer be a Spotify exclusive under the new arrangement. Presumably because Spotify reckons it can sell more advertising around the programme if it is available everywhere. Hence Rogan is returning to Apple and Amazon.
With Apple, there was actually a work-around Young could have employed to avoid being a hypocrite, in that Apple has separate apps for music and podcasts, meaning that Young's songs would never be side-by-side with Rogan's waffley ramblings. Amazon, like Spotify, does mix podcasts up with songs in its music app, though Young could possibly have relied on the fact that nobody uses Amazon Music to listen to podcasts.
But Young isn't a man for employing technicalities. He is, however, a man who likes his audio to be lossless. Indeed, his beef with Spotify over the audio quality of its streams long preceded the streaming service's exclusivity deal with Rogan.
So committed to high quality audio is Young that he even tried to launch his own digital music service to provide such audio. But then Tidal and Deezer and Amazon and Apple all jumped on the hi res audio bandwagon, rendering Young's Pono service redundant.
Spotify, however, is yet to join its rivals on that bandwagon, despite promising to do so on multiple occasions, and even announcing a planned Spotify Hifi tier in 2021.
"I have returned to Spotify in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it", Young says in his new blog post. "I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created".
Signing off with a rally call to Spotify itself, he declares, "Hopefully Spotify will turn to hi res as the answer and serve all the music to everyone. Spotify, you can do it! Really be number one in all ways. You have the music and the listeners! Start with a limited hi res tier and build from there!"