Spotify is removing Neil Young's music.

As a spokesman for the Swedish audio streaming service said on Wednesday evening German time, Neil Young regrets his decision to have his music removed from the platform and hopes that he will return soon.

"We want to offer our users the music and audio content from around the world," the statement continued.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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This is associated with great responsibility and the task of maintaining a balance between the "security of our listeners and the freedom of the 'creators'".

Spotify has deleted more than 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid-19 since the pandemic began, the spokesman said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the decision.

The Canadian musician had previously accused Spotify of spreading misinformation about Covid-19 vaccinations through the marketing of Joe Rogan's podcast ("The Joe Rogan Experience") in an open letter on its website, which was later deleted.

As a consequence, he asked his management and Warner Music, through whose label Warner Records Young's recordings are released, to have his music removed from Spotify.

Rogan is not the first time in the criticism

With around 11 million listeners per episode, Rogan's podcast is the most popular show on Spotify.

The 54-year-old comedian also works as a commentator on mixed martial arts fights.

In his podcast, he often talks to his guests for several hours on a wide variety of topics.

With a view to the corona pandemic, he had previously drawn criticism after declaring in April 2021 that in his opinion young, healthy people should not be vaccinated.

He later added that one shouldn't listen to him, since he wasn't a doctor.

Only recently, around 270 doctors, scientists and healthcare workers published an open letter and made reference, among other things, to an episode from the end of December in which the US virologist Robert Malone was a guest.

He was once researching mRNA technology, but for some time he has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about Covid 19 vaccinations.

Twitter recently blocked his account for this reason.

On the show with Rogan, he explained, among other things, that part of the population is basically “hypnotized” to believe what the media and presidential adviser Anthony Fauci say about vaccinations.

"Place of Life-threatening Corona Disinformation"

In a new statement released on its website Wednesday night, Young referred to the letter that brought "this issue" to his attention.

Spotify has become a “place of life-threatening corona disinformation” that is threatening young listeners in particular.

Lies would be sold for money.

The Swedish streaming service secured the license for exclusive distribution of the podcast for around $100 million in 2020 as part of its podcast offensive.

Spotify has been using podcasts for some time, on the one hand to be able to offer exclusive content, since the music catalog of the various services is largely the same, and on the other hand to offer potential customers better advertising opportunities by marketing them.

Young later thanked his label for the support, as he did not have the right to initiate the deletion on his own. A label usually holds the rights to an artist's recordings or is responsible for marketing them under a license agreement. Young sold 50 percent of the rights to the underlying texts and compositions to the Hipgnosis fund in early 2021.

With 381 million monthly active listeners and 172 million subscribers reported at the end of the third quarter of 2021, the Swedes are the clear market leader ahead of Apple and Amazon.

However, the tech companies rarely disclose separate figures for their services.

Apple, for example, last mentioned figures in June 2019: more than 60 million subscribers.

According to Young, Spotify has so far accounted for 60 percent of the streams of his music on the various services.

With regard to the Spotify competition, the two-time Grammy winner explained that his decision also had “a positive side for his listeners”, because both Apple and Amazon or the small hi-fi service Qobuz ultimately offer music with better sound quality.

It's not the first time that Young has complained about music being compressed for smaller amounts of data on streaming services.

A few years ago he had his catalog removed for this reason.

However, it was later available again, which Young explained by the fact that his fans now primarily streamed music.

The topic of hi-fi is in a way a sore point for Spotify, which for its part announced the introduction of a CD-quality offer in February 2021. So far, however, there is no specific date for this. The background is the decision by Apple and Amazon in May last year to offer lossless sound quality for the standard price of 9.99 euros from now on. Until then, a price surcharge was usual for this, which Spotify may also have been after.

As of Thursday morning, Young's music was still available on Spotify.

To date, the 76-year-old has had around six million monthly listeners.

“Heart of Gold” alone has been streamed more than 235 million times over the years.

"Harvest Moon" has 163 million views.

Young's text, meanwhile, ended with an appeal to other artists and music companies to do the same and remove their catalogs from Spotify.