“So they chose to have that guy because they’re making millions of dollars off of him and they’ve just given him a whole bunch of money and that I would just eventually roll over and be back,” he said of what he suspected the streamers’ fiscal calculus was. When it came down to it, Young said, he made it very clear: you can have “that guy” or you can have me. Why would I want to keep it on Spotify when it sounds like a pixilated movie?” “And it sounds better at the other places. We’ve got all these other places,” Young said of his request. “The way I look at it, that just turned me off and I made an instant decision - I didn’t think about it at all - just take my music off, we don’t need it. A handful of artists including India.Arie, Nils Lofgren, Failure, his former CSNY bandmates Graham Nash, David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell eventually joined his leave-taking. After Young requested that his catalog be removed from Spotify in January - citing the spread of vaccine misinformation on the Joe Rogan Experience - he wasn’t entirely alone. Young said he wasn’t surprised that more artists didn’t join his crusade against Spotify. “I think in the digital age we should be able to listen to great stuff, the best that we can get out of digital… Because you’re living off the music, why not pay it some respect and make it sound as great as it does.” There’s Amazon, there’s Apple, there Qobuz, those are three streaming services that play hi-res,” said Young, who has long fought against what he considers the low-quality fidelity of everything from CDs to digital files. When Stern asked how much money Young left on the table by yanking his tunes from Spotify, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said he didn’t know and didn’t care.

But then it just turned into money, money, money, money,” he said.

Young said he knew Ek initially had good intentions with his service, because they’d met and he seemed to be “coming from a good place. Who cares? You know, who cares? What’s his name? Daniel Ek? He cares about money.” Get me off.’ And we’ll be fine, and it was a little shocking because they know all the numbers. “I just called up my management and said, ‘We’re out of there. Who cares? You know, who cares? What’s his name? Daniel Ek? He cares about money.“And I listened to it and they were saying he purposely is saying this stuff that he knows isn’t true about COVID and people were dying,” he said of the misinformation on Rogan’s show about medically dubious COVID therapies.

“And I listened to it and they were saying he purposely is saying this stuff that he knows isn’t true about COVID and people were dying,” he said of Rogan’s decision to platform vaccine falsehoods. Via Billboard, Young also gave more details on his battle with the big green circle earlier this year, and how he arrived at his decision. “I woke up one morning and I heard somebody saying there was some scientists saying something about COVID, or some doctors and they were saying something about COVID and how many people were dying in hospitals and misinformation,” Young said. Neil Young has no regrets after pulling his music from Spotify over vaccine misinformation, saying on The Howard Stern Show, “Why would I keep it on there when it sounds like a pixilated movie?”

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