The pivot into podcasts means Spotify is even less beholden to musicians than before, even those as venerable as Young and Mitchell. Is Spotify a streaming service and a content provider, aka publisher? The latter comes with responsibilities and potential regulations it is probably reluctant to embrace, but it is undeniable that it has an exclusive deal with the handsomely paid Rogan, which suggests to many observers that it is a publisher after all. It must stick in the craw of artists to be told they can’t leverage more money out of Spotify because it is merely a streaming service, only to watch it spend $500m on companies generating original podcast content that it will then own. The biggest chunk of cash goes straight to the owners of the recordings, nearly always the record label, which is probably why you don’t hear the labels – three of whom part-own Spotify anyway – complaining as much as the artists. It is often younger or less well-known artists – professionals but not global names like Young – who are worst hit, tied to contracts that not only limit their Spotify earnings, but also disempower them from protesting as Young did.
It would be easy to see this as the actions of grumpy old men and women who have long resented Spotify’s business model, one that sees payments of an average $0.004 per stream (depending on a complex set of metrics including location and an artist’s share of an overall streaming total that’s skewed towards the biggest stars). The news that Young’s strike would be joined by Joni Mitchell, then Nils Lofgren and Graham Nash did give the impression you had to have lived in Laurel Canyon in 1973 to take part. What is pretty much impossible to ascertain is the extent to which this is a principled walkout and how much is an excuse to have a dig at a platform singularly unpopular with rockers of a certain age.
Under tsunamis of this nonsense on social media platforms, plus countless podcasts and even mainstream radio and TV, Young’s beef with Spotify will more likely be remembered for highlighting two other issues: what – and who – is Spotify for? What began as a moral stand against the alleged spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines via the Joe Rogan podcast will have a significance beyond that highly selective gesture. The Spotify boycott instigated by Neil Young looks certain to run out of steam faster than one of his interminable guitar solos.
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