Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young and pulled her music from Spotify. A statement on her website says:
“ I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue. —Joni Mitchell”
I knew that she had polio as a child, but didn’t know that Neil Young also had polio, which paralysed thousands of children a year in the 1950s but virtually vanished after the vaccine was developed. Perhaps that explains why they both feel so strongly.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
4
Interesting. Thanks.
The Washington Post article on this has some interesting figures, too:
Then there’s the question of how much impact a single artist can have. The numbers look staggering. The Weeknd, an extreme outlier, currently garners 86.6 million monthly listeners. Adele has 60 million. Drake has about 53.6 million monthly listeners. Taylor Swift has about 54 million; BTS has 42.3 million.
And
Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. He usually posts four to five of them each week, and they frequently last longer than three hours. […] Plus — and this is key — he’s exclusive to Spotify.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
5
Not on this subject but if I have a difference of opinion with anyone in the future will I have to send all the CDs and vinyl of theirs back that I collected?
I remember the days that artists put all their angst into some decent material in order to make a point.
It’s funny I remember buying 4 or 5 NY album’s on CD when he left Tidal over the MQA Master’s complaint, but I have Roon and nothing changed besides a parting of money and a few CD rips.
If you are an exclusively Spotify listener (including many of my friends) them it’s just tough luck I guess.
Off to buy some popcorn and a front row seat as hopefully this becomes a really interesting story.
There is a lot of Hay to be made.
While reading an article this morning (Guardian I think) they had stated that Spotify owns 86% of the US streaming market
Though I would really not want Apple to cement their second place and grow even more popular. Sad that everything moves towards monopoly in a free market
Yeah maybe. My take on this is that there wouldn’t be any sort of exodus. If an artist is still “in their prime” they likely don’t want to let those $$$ and eyeballs go.
All of which is weird, given how little the main streaming services pay. Neil and Joni will be fine, we’ll be fine, and Spotify will continue to not be a music-first company.
That’s only because 86% of the US streaming target audience doesn’t give a frozen ■■■■ (on anything for that matter). They’ll just keep enjoying consuming it, frozen or not.
Hats off: “As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else,”
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
20
The dyspeptic cynic in me has to wonder how much of this is a Neil Young publicity stunt. He’s made lots of headlines over the years arguing that digital music, from CDs to streaming, sounds bad. Some might call that spreading misinformation, in fact. Now that he’s apparently given in to the supposed evils of digital music, perhaps he needs another angle?