This makes me feel ill where I didn't know I could feel ill. Thanks to WIRED for the article. THIS WEEK, SPOTIFY removed the musical catalog of Neil Young from its platform. On Monday, the legendary rocker published a letter decrying the Swedish streamer for spreading false information about Covid-19 vaccines. In it, he cited the Spotify-exclusive podcast The Joe Rogan Experience in particular: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Spotify quickly made its choice—Rogan.

Of course it did. Young vs. Spotify has been framed as a culture-war victory for Joe Rogan, but it’s not. There was no battle. Yes, plenty of people are angry at Rogan, including the 270 health care professionals whose highly publicized open letter to Spotify about the podcaster’s content inspired Young. But there is no evidence that this rancor has impacted Rogan’s position as Spotify’s golden boy. His podcast remains number one on its charts in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. (Young, in contrast, is the 778th most popular musical artist.) Spotify didn’t give Rogan a reported $100 million in a noble effort to spearhead a public health campaign. It gave him the money to be his freewheeling, contrarian, and almost constantly controversial self. He’s a shock jock. Spotify knew what it was buying in May 2020. Back then, when it ported over Rogan’s catalog, it left out more than 40 older episodes, including interviews with Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes—and it faced a wave of backlash from angry fans for doing so. This time around, it seems less inclined to rankle Rogan’s acolytes than it is to accept that a fraction of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young superfans who care about public health will be deleting their accounts.

No disrespect to Neil Young, but he was never going to move the needle here. Ever. Even if he got other artists on board to boycott Spotify, it’s unlikely any coalition would have the desired effect. First of all, there are practical roadblocks, as musicians are rarely the owners of their own music. Young didn’t actually have the ability to remove his albums, and had to get permission from his label to do so; it’s far from a given that the major labels would do the same for their contemporary stars. But say they did—and say the streamer’s current top four artists, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Bad Bunny, and Ariana Grande, joined forces and yanked their music from Spotify—even then, it is unlikely that Spotify would exile Rogan.