Neil Young: “If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form”

Neil Young took his music off Spotify this week after making an ultimatum to the streaming service to either drop the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for disseminating Covid vaccine misinformation, or lose him as a client. "You can have Rogan or Young," he said. "Not both."

He's now written more about his decision the leave Spotify in an post on his website titled "More Songs Less Sound," which mostly has to do with his longstanding battle against low quality audio compression. "When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better," he writes, and goes on to say, "If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist's music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing."

At the end of his letter, without naming names, he gets into the Rogan part. "I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others….As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else."

Read the whole letter below.

Avoid streaming services and pick up Neil Young albums on vinyl in the BV shop.

More Songs And Less Sound

When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better.

Digital music has been with us about 40 years now. Digital, rather than reproducing copies of the music as we did back in the analog day, reconstitutes it from 1s and 0s and plays back data that you hear as music. This allows business people like those who run SPOTIFY to cut the quality right down to 5% of the music's content. It's just math. It's easy to do that with digital, thus allowing more songs and less music to stream faster.

That's because 95% is missing. Thats what SPOTIFY the Tech company does. SPOTIFY then sells you the downgraded music.

When I started everyone got to hear all the music. 100%.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist's music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz now deliver the real thing. SPOTIFY is ripping you off and has been since day 1. No goosebumps from SPOTIFY sound!

Switch to one of the alternatives – companies that support the arts. Real sound is available there. AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz You just have to leave Spotify and go to a new place that truly cares about music quality.

I met Daniel Ek when he started SPOTIFY. It sounded to me like he was really going to be getting into it. That was a long time ago. I wonder what happened.

When I left Spotify, I felt better.

I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.

As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else.

love earth

be well

neil

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