The Singer’s Veto

I’m a huge fan of Neil Young’s music, whether CSNY or solo. There are lyrics that pop into my head. The melodies can move me. More than anything else, the songs bring me back to happy, simpler times. And there was a lot about his protest music that rang true to me, at least at the time.

I’ve never seen the Joe Rogan Experience, and don’t quite understand why a comedian and former host of a show where people ate bugs is qualified to offer much by way of insightful commentary. A lot of other people, apparently, like the show.

Young did something a person is entirely right to do: He decided that he would no longer have his music played on Spotify if it continued to host Rogan. He made his position clear: “they can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” This is how you put your money where your mouth is. Spotify said bye.

This wasn’t the only way Young could challenge what he fairly believes to be dangerous misinformation. He could speak out, which is like anyone else but with a Neil Young-sized megaphone. He could write a spectacular song, which everyone could hum and might win him a Grammy. Instead, he chose to tell a third party, a platform, a source of income of his own, to choose. So it did.

It may be that Spotify chose its money maker, as Rogan brings in a lot more people than Neil Young. Or it may be that Spotify realized that Young’s demand put it in the position of acquiescing to the Heckler’s Veto. If Spotify gave in to the veto, it would then be captive to any songster of note making demands on who should be allowed on its platform, what information was deemed acceptable. It’s a type of extortion, do what I say or else.

Of course, if Spotify decided to go with its bigger money-maker, and would have happily kicked Rogan’s butt out the door if Young was a better revenue producer, it still would have been within the parameters of its business duties, but it would be substantially less admirable. Greed has its place in business, but it’s not a lofty principle.

But what if, hearing Young’s call to arms, a dozen, a hundred other musicians (or the owners of their rights) signed on? Can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day, telling Spotify it’s Rogan or them? And friends, they may think it’s a movement.

Sonny Bunch argues that, in many ways, this is the system working as it should, a celebration of freedom of association, which inherently includes freedom of disassociation.

First, those who celebrate freedom of association should welcome the move: Freedom of association means freedom of disassociation as well. If your neighbors annoy you, you should always be free to move somewhere the neighbors are less annoying.

Similarly, Spotify should be allowed to decide whom to do business with. If keeping Joe Rogan is more profitable than keeping Neil Young — and it almost certainly is, given Rogan’s massive audience and his exclusivity to the platform — then Spotify should be able to pick Rogan over Young. And if that decision in turn sparks a wave of cancellations, with #SpotifyDeleted trending on Twitter, so be it.

This is all well and good. Content creators and content consumers alike choose their preferred associations, and we all go about our day.

So this is all good news, an exercise of rights on both sides, with Young choosing to lose whatever income he gains from Spotify and Spotify choosing to loose whatever revenue it will lose by those who cancel. This is the way it’s supposed to work. Or is it?

But I do worry about the continued fragmentation of society that attends the idea that everyone sharing a cultural space must align ideologically to coexist. Most would think it unreasonable for Young to demand to be removed from a radio station’s playlist because that station also plays Trump fans Ted Nugent or Kid Rock — or even if it played Eric Clapton’s silly vaccine protest song.

I’m even more of a fan of Clapton in any of his permutations, even though he’s said some pretty stupid and bad things. After all, he is a watch guy and he plays guitar pretty well.

There’s also a queasiness to Young’s attempt to convince other musicians to strong-arm Spotify by removing their wares, too. I’m wary of boycotts generally, as there are few limiting principles once you decide you cannot tolerate someone’s thinking.

By my definition, what distinguishes cancel culture from ordinary criticism is that it doesn’t end with direct condemnation, but with demands to third parties to act upon the criticism. In labor law, this would be an unlawful secondary boycott. Based on the same rationale, it’s wrong here as well.

Setting that aside, what concerns me most about all this is the siloing of society into warring tribes. It’s not enough to signal disagreement with someone when they do or say something boneheaded; the only response is full separation, an immediate partition. There’s something deeply corrosive about attempting to live in a way that demands everyone agree with you, even on a fundamental issue such as vaccination.

Did Sonny just discover polarization, the extreme fringes of the unduly passionate for whom every issue is life and death, thus justifying crushing the enemy no matter what it takes? Is this what he deems problematic?

Sometimes mass movements are the only way to solve mass problems, such as state-sanctioned bigotry. Trying to silence a rambling fool feels like small potatoes in comparison.

While there’s no doubt that many have fallen into the trap of making every ill, real or imagined, a life or death catastrophe, each of us gets to pick which hill we’re willing to die on. What’s “small potatoes” to Bunch was big enough potatoes for Neil Young to risk his music being pulled off Spotify. That’s his choice.

Whether he regrets it is unknown, but he’s entitled to take a stand he believes is worth the risk and suffer the consequences. Perhaps the only consideration that should not be forgotten is that, in another time, he could have been Skynyrd as the heretic. I like music. A lot. But I no more turn to Neil Young for my politics than Joe Rogan for my medical advice or Spotify for my listening pleasure.

19 thoughts on “The Singer’s Veto

  1. Quinn Martindale

    Relax. When two sides go to war over the broadcast of ‘harmful speech’, people have been turn turn turning to the publisher and advertisers for ever and for always. You may here the ringing of revolution but it’s the same old story.

    1. David

      You remind me of my 12-year-old kid, who informs me that this thing has been happening “MY WHOLE LIFE!!!”

      If you were a tenth as smart as you think you are, you would realize that all the folks older and wiser don’t need a child to inform them of what they’ve experienced in their life. And yet, here you are.

  2. Elpey P.

    It’s continually framed as Spotify choosing Rogan over Young, but this wasn’t really the choice, except in an “if you choose not to decide…” sort of way. But even then the choice still wasn’t between Young and Rogan, it was between doing nothing and doing Young’s bidding. Imagine if Rogan hated Young and issued a public ultimatum to Spotify to yank him? Does anyone think they would still “choose Rogan”? Imagine the fallout to that. The choice doesn’t have to turn on economics, although in that regard Young was making just about the worst poker bluff possible.

    Young could still have kept his music on Spotify with their blessing. He’s the one who pulled it. Spotify choose not to give power to a reactionary censor and the Pandora’s Box of internecine feuds that would have come along with it. The choice made here was Young’s. He just want Spotify to take the blame for it, and the demagogues are happy to report it that way.

    1. PK

      Young might frame his decision as “having no choice but to”, for whatever that’s worth. Young made it about Rogan, so the media’s Young v. Rogan take isn’t remarkably off-base. You’re right to focus on Young’s behavior and agency, but you’d do better to engage with what he’s saying directly rather than react and blame Young entirely without more unless you want to make a martyr of him and possibly encourage others to do the same. What’s fair is fair, sure, but Young is saying Rogan is so reprehensible that he should not have the platform Spotify provides.

      That’s the rub. Can someone be so reprehensible as to be forcibly shut down? Probably, considering the extent of imagination. When should that happen and who should decide and how? Probably not by Neil Young issuing a personal ultimatum. Is Rogan so reprehensible as to warrant within reason such a negative reaction? Does Young have any moral duty to act in this way like he might claim? Should Spotify have shut Rogan down on their own assuming he is that reprehensible? Can we even talk about any of this without submitting to the polarization and forming tribes out for each other’s blood?

      1. Elpey P.

        Well if Young identifies as having no choice we shouldn’t deny his existence by centering his agency. This is America, we need to center everyone’s existence and deny their agency. But if he wants to be a martyr here, what’s the downside to anyone else? If enough people agree with him (yay democracy?) he will make a difference.

        Of course the pseudo-important debate is itself dressed up in a shroud of spurious and corporatized culture war narrative. Thus the more common counterpoint here is not a handwringing reluctance but that Rogan’s critics are full of shit. It raises the question of why people like Young aren’t demanding that government and institutional media voices be purged for disinformation along with the dissenters.

    2. MIKE GUENTHER

      Economics could have been part of the decision making process for Spotify. Rogan has a 100 Million dollar contract with them. Spotify could have gone with Young and got rid of Rogan, but I’m pretty sure that they still would have had to pay him.

      As far as Neil Young’s music, there are a very few of his songs I like. The rest are meh.

  3. B. McLeod

    This stuff goes on in the periphery. Most people are like the peasant in the field, caring more about when it will rain than whether the king and parliament (or Joe Rogan and Neil Young) are fighting.

  4. Guitardave

    He huffed and he puffed and blew his own house down. Way to go, Spotify…fuck ultimatums.
    I have enjoyed a lot of Neils music over the years, the writing more than most performances.

    It’s funny, you’d think for the amount of time and energy I spent learning and playing a bunch of his tunes that I might be sad. But no. The way the worlds been going, another old asshat doing something really stupid with his megaphone is the norm. That’s what makes me sad.

    Someone needs to take a look at his life.

    Meanwhile, a last hurrah. And but for really good covers, this DJ is giving your library a rest, ….

      1. Anonymous Coward

        Neil Young was wrong to threaten Spotify with withdrawal of his music if they didn’t drop or censor Joe Rogan and Spotify was right to say “don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out”.
        Mr. Young should be free to withdraw his material as a protest, but not as a threat and I hope they played the relevant verse of Sweet Home Alabama.

  5. Pedantic Grammar Police

    “don’t quite understand why a comedian and former host of a show where people ate bugs is qualified to offer much by way of insightful commentary”

    If you watched one of Joe’s shows, you might understand why he is so popular. He hosts guests with a wide range of opinions for open discussion where nothing is off limits, and he’s a very good interviewer. It’s a refreshing break from the controlled narrative that is offered by the “mainstream” outlets that he is destroying with his “aw shucks I’m just a dumb guy asking questions” journalism.

    1. KP

      Yes, its like this place. Joe is not the big deal, the other people he showcases are. I think he had more viewers last week than CNN, although I’ve only watched a few of his shows.

      At least he’s still vertical, so what he did with Covid obviously worked. The photographs of Neil Young were shocking, Young in name only. The most common question outside the old fart’s club is “Neil Young? Who’s he?”

      1. James

        The Joe Rogan Experience averages ~11million viewers. The next, most viewed cable news show (Tucker Carlson Tonight) averages ~3.24 million. For reference, the CNN Primetime Average is 0.82 million. (ref Q3 2021 Media Ratings Nielson/Spotify)

  6. Curtis

    I have probably listened to Neil Young more than any other singer and I have not listened to one second of Rogan. However, I am more likely stream Rogan than Young at this point. His protest songs will never sound the same again.

    I ask “Is it strange I should change?” but I know I haven’t changed. “She said he’s strange but don’t change” but he has. When the battle lines were drawn, he said “Hooray for our side.”

  7. Rengit

    Easy to change some words around here:

    Well I heard Mister Young talk about Joe
    Well I heard ol’ Neil put him down
    Well I hope Neil Young will remember
    Spotify don’t need him around anyhow

    No fan of Rogan or Neil Young (or Skynyrd), but this episode isn’t completely out of character for Neil, as he’s had a habit of picking fights and starting quarrels with other performers and his record labels. He had an issue with one label that he resolved by putting out records that sounded nothing like Neil Young, leading them to sue him and lose, and then he sparred with another label when he put down Pepsi (some type of corporate relationship between the two) in the video for This Note’s for You. He has usually won over his career, but this was an escalation in his quarrelsomeness, and he lost to Rogan and Spotify.

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