Somehow Hunger Strike, this poignant Temple of the Dog song came to mind when researching for this post! Make of it what you will, but I think as far a protest songs go this one seems quite fitting...
I am sure you are all aware of the controversy stemming from #Joerogan and his podcast on #Spotify being a "super-spreader" of "misinformation" about Covid 19 and the safety/effectency of the vaccines, and that the host company is doing very little to reel in the podcaster's scientifically incorrect views being stated as facts. If this isn't enough he is Racist and is recorded saying the "N" word and many other racist slurs. As a result there have been several podcasters and artists to pull their content from this very popular platform including " #Marytrump who's podcast's hash tag is #deletespotify, #Neilyoung who has over 6 million listeners , #Joniemitchell with 3.7 million listeners, #Nilslofgren with over 220,000 monthly listeners, #grahamnash with half a million listeners, #davidcrosby with over 200,000 listeners, #stephenstills who's music on Spotify has 400,000 monthly listeners, and #indaarie with 1.3 million listeners. Spotify lost $4 billion in market value after Niel Young called them out for basically condoning Joe Rogan's behavior and "their stocks went down 12% because of hashtags such as #DeleteSpotify and #CancelSpotify gained traction on social media, with many websites offering step-by-step instructions for users to remove the app from their devices." (Datebook)
I don't think it is any kind of crazy stretch to presume that many other artist with high listeners counts will follow suit in removing their contents and asking others to do the same, but I want to encourage the artist and podcasters that may have much smaller followings to do your research and please consider taking your content off Spotify and use almost any other platform to host your work. As for me, I am have taken season 1 of Musician's Rewind off Spotify, and when I launch season 2 later this year it will be on Applepodcast, Google Podcast, Pandora, Podbean, and probably adding a few other this year and Spotify will NOT be one of them!!
Sources:
The Mary Trump Show on Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/eJty84PYre