The rock band took their music off Spotify in February, over concerns regarding misinformation being shared on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Crosby, Stills and Nash's music is back on Spotify after the band's months-long boycott of the platform over concerns regarding misinformation being shared on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Per Billboard, the trio will donate proceeds from streams of their music to COVID-19 charities for at least a month.
Though the band split in 2015, they reunited in February, to issue a joint statement in support of their former bandmate, Neil Young, who made the decision to remove his music from the streamer in January, giving Spotify an ultimatum to choose either Young's music or Rogan's podcast -- which is exclusively available on the streamer.
In their statement, Crosby, Stills and Nash shared their concerns over having their catalog of music on the same streaming platform as the "dangerous disinformation" being shared by Rogan on his The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
"We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast. While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences. Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music — or the music we made together — to be on the same platform," bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash said at the time.
In response, a Spotify spokesperson told The Washington Post in a statement, "We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon."
Other artists joined in, including Joni Mitchell, India Arie and more, prompting Spotify to add a "content advisory" to any podcast episode that includes discussion of COVID-19.
"This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources," a press release sent out at the time read. "This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days."
Rogan also addressed the controversy surrounding his eponymous podcast at the time, speaking to his followers in a video posted to social media.
"I wanted to make this video first of all because I think there’s a lot of people that have a distorted perception of what I do maybe based on sound bites or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging," he told viewers. "The podcast has been accused of spreading dangerous misinformation, he continued, citing two past episodes in particular, one involving Dr. Peter A. McCullough and another with Dr. Robert Malone.
"They have an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative," Rogan said, calling them very intelligent and accomplished. "I wanted to hear what their opinion is."
In response to some of his episodes being labeled "misinformation," the host argued that "many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact." However, Rogan also acknowledged that, ultimately, he is just an interviewer.
“I do not know if they’re right. I don’t know because I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist," Rogan said. "I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them." He admitted to getting things wrong and trying to correct his inaccuracies.
In regard to the hitmakers pulling their music from Spotify, Rogan said he "most certainly" does not want that and has no hard feelings toward them. He also expressed his gratitude to Spotify. "I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time," he said. "I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much heat from it."
"My point of doing this is always just to create interesting conversations and ones that I hope people enjoy, so if I pissed you off, I’m sorry and if you enjoy the podcast, thank you," he said as he concluded the video. "Thank you to Spotify. Thank you all the supporters and even thank you to the haters because it's good to have some haters -- it makes you reassess what you’re doing and put things into perspective and I think that’s good, too."
For more on the controversy, check out the links below.
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