Neil Young accused Joe Rogan of lying about the pandemic on The Howard Stern Show when discussing his Spotify boycott, though he never mentioned Rogan by name.
“I woke up one morning and I heard somebody saying there was some scientists saying something about [the pandemic], or some doctors and they were saying something about [the pandemic] and how many people were dying in hospitals and misinformation.”
“And I listened to it and they were saying he purposely is saying this stuff that he knows isn’t true about [the pandemic] and people were dying. I just called up my management and said, ‘We’re out of there. Get me off.’ And we’ll be fine, and it was a little shocking because they know all the [streaming] numbers. Who cares? You know, who cares? What’s his name? [Spotify CEO] Daniel Ek? He cares about money.”
Stern asked Young how much money he lost leaving Spotify. Neil said, “I knew I was gonna do fine. There’s Amazon, there’s Apple, there Qobuz, those are three streaming services that play hi-res. I think in the digital age we should be able to listen to great stuff, the best that we can get out of digital… Because you’re living off the music, why not pay it some respect and make it sound as great as it does.”
“The way I look at it, that just turned me off and I made an instant decision — I didn’t think about it at all — just take my music off, we don’t need it. We’ve got all these other places,” Young said of his request. “And it sounds better at the other places. Why would I want to keep it on Spotify when it sounds like a pixilated movie?”
Neil said Spotify could have “that guy” Joe Rogan or him.
“So they chose to have that guy because they’re making millions of dollars off of him and they’ve just given him a whole bunch of money and that I would just eventually roll over and be back. Neil said he will “never going back there, or anywhere else like it. I don’t have to, I don’t want to. I don’t crave the airplay like that. I don’t really need it, I don’t want it.”
