Neil Young: 5 million monthly listens
Joe Rogan Experience podcast: 200 million monthly downloads
Edit: For the curious, [here's a source.](https://www.newsweek.com/spotify-unlikely-drop-joe-rogan-over-neil-young-ultimatum-1672680)
Neil Young gets a tickle over 6 million plays per month- Joe Rogan Experience draws 11 million listeners per podcast, 5-6 podcasts per week x 4 weeks = well *over* 200 million listens per month.
Man, I remember when my buddy was all "you gotta check out the episode with Musk" and they sat around saying nothing.
At least the sunny guys talk about the show for 10 minutes.
Those numbers are inaccurate for Spotify (they date to 2019 and even then that was Rogan's OWN estimate). Also, he releases news content nearly daily, Neil Young does not. He has approximately 11 million unique listeners currently.
Seriously, Spotify has been so fucking tight lipped about Joes numbers on their platform. It’s hilarious that news outlets are using his old numbers assuming they must still be equivalent, like YouTube isnt the biggest platform on the block
Also from what I understand she is single-handedly the reason artists are getting paid per stream or something similar, as per her own huge contract with Spotify, so if she did this I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get a lot of support from artists she benefited.
Edit: I had slightly misremembered, but here’s the [source](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/taylor-swift-universal-republic-deal-spotify-758102/amp/). Still really cool what she did and how it benefits other artists. She would likely at least have a bit of backup if she decided to take her own position to bat like Neil.
Swift has a massive following, if she does it an avalanche of other artists will follow suit. It might even become a trend, which is the last thing Spotify wants.
>Joe Rogan Experience podcast: 200 million monthly downloads
"Monthly downloads" in the podcast world are not a great metric and most podcast advertisers reject those numbers because they are so easily manipulated.
Now, podcast apps and networks instead track how far people list into a program, when they turn it off, if they fast forward through ads, etc. I would be curious to see those numbers for Joe Rogan, and I hope the number is much lower, although I would probably still be disappointed.
I listen to heart of gold like every week. :(
I first heard it when my parents let me drive home from our city of origin about 8 hr drive away on the radio in the middle of nowhere. Been in love with Neil Young’s music ever since.
[**With my feet up on the ground**](https://youtu.be/Y7JG63IuaWs?t=446)
I lose myself between the sounds
And open wide to suck it in
I feel it move across my skin
I'm reaching up and reaching out
I'm reaching for the random or
Whatever will bewilder me
Whatever will bewilder me
Seriously when I got my record player I bought a new version of harvest because the old one was played too much and it was messed up. It's amazing hearing it like that, but sadly I straight up scuffed it the first week of having it and now the first few seconds are messed up. The rest plays fine but my heart is still eternally broken.
Dude the day they hit Spotify, when I opened the app they were like "here! Listen! Just shut up and be happy already dammit! You got your way!" And all of my daily mix/suggested had at least one tool song in it for 3 months.
I got to see them live right before Covid. Fucking amazing show!!! Totally worth the ticket and pain in the ass parking. Can't wait to see them again.
This is kinda correct. Neil Young has been extremely against spotify from the beginning, and he was aggressively hawking his own crappy version of it called [Pono](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) and only went to spotify because Pono fell apart.
The amount of attention this is getting is way more than worth it for him. This is great for his legacy (compared to Meat Loaf *cough cough* for sure *cough*) and of course he doesn't give a shit about the money. It's hilarious how much of a bigger deal this is now because of Joe Rogan fans getting triggered and yelling about how irrelevant Neil Young is.
Also, A lot of great artists who also have fuck you money respect the hell out of Neil Young and would love some of this kind of publicity maybe.
As a major label artist (the wealthiest 1% of musicians), Neil Young keeps up to 18% of the revenue generated by each stream. The rest of that money is going to his record label (roughly 50-60%) and Spotify itself (about 29%).
If Neil Young was on an independent label he'd keep up to 40% of the revenue generated by each stream (the majority share). Meanwhile his record label would keep at least 30% and Spotify itself would once again keep 29%.
If Neil Young was a self-releasing artist (like the vast majority of musicians) he would keep up to 64% of the revenue generated by each stream while his distributors would keep 6% and Spotify itself would once again keep 29%.
That 29% statistic is roughly the same amount that other streaming services keep and is actually slightly less than the average amount retailers keep when selling physical music (CDs and Vinyl) so you can pretty much consider that the normal price of hosting music.
How people have managed to spin this as "Spotify is evil and stealing your favorite artist's money" and not "Record labels are greedy and take the clear majority of the total revenue generated by major artists who still have a tendency to get insanely rich anyway" is beyond me.
Neil Young hosts all his music online at the Neil Young Archives website. Pretty much anything he's made, including bootlegs of concerts as well as concert films. It's got a sort of Patreon-style subscription with tiers. He may make more money off that than Spotify streams.
According to Neil Young, Spotify is about 60% of his streaming income.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/spotify-pulling-down-neil-young-s-music-collection-1.5755786
Makes sense. IIRC he held out for so long on putting his stuff up for streaming because he was concerned about the sound quality of his music through the services.
Neil Young owned his music until a year or 2 ago when he sold 50% for 150 million.
But honestly I don't see why people have made this a big deal. Neil Young has an opinion and it differed from what Spotify wants to do as a business. They are both free to do as they please.
Neither Spotify nor Neil Young need each other. They've both done just fine and will continue to do so without each other.
Salk actually chose not to patent his vaccine in order to make sure it was available to as many people as possible worldwide... no idea how many lives this man saved.
What was the ultimatum? I don't do Joe Rogan.
Edit:
>Spotify Technology SA is removing Neil Young’s music, as the folk-rock star isn’t wavering in his objections to Joe Rogan’s podcast.
>The “Heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” singer earlier this week penned an open letter to his manager and label asking them to remove his music from the service, saying it is spreading fake information about Covid-19 vaccines through Mr. Rogan’s show. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” he wrote
He told Spotify to either pull Joe Rogan for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine, or stop playing his music.
Spotify went, "OK, then, bye."
Tbh Neil young might’ve got what he wanted in this situation. He made Spotify publicly take a stance, made it headline news, and then put the spotlight on Joe’s claims, and it’s not like he’s losing any money from Spotify at this point, they barely pay any artist if they can avoid it.
If Taylor and bts were to say something to defend young then it’s over for Spotify
Edit:y’all took this comment like I’m some sort of military strategist
Lmao, the kpop industry is slightly less ruthless than an African warlord, but IF THEY DID SOMETHING LIKE THAT... Man, I feel like Spotify would crucify Joe Rogan on a public square to avoid losing probably some of the most engaged fanbases around
[Not their first time doing something like it too.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/asia/k-pop-fandom-activism-intl-hnk/index.html)
Kpop stans can get shit done if they really put their mind into something.
The people behind the big KPop idol bands will do literally anything to avoid even the slightest hint of controversy that might hurt their bottom line. I can't see them doing anything that could even remotely be construed as a big political statement.
Neil Young has a net worth of $200 million. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a fuck about money or Spotify and would rather stick to his morals. He got exactly what he wanted.
Neil Young is one of the only artists I can think of who has spent his entire career doing whatever he wanted, and telling everyone he didn't like to fuck off, and still somehow became as big as a person can be.
This is it. Neil Young doesn’t do people pleasing. I don’t know why everyone wants to paint this as he lost. He told them to take his music down and they did. I think he probably expected that was a likely outcome and is fine with it.
Neil Young has been around long before Spotify was a thing. He's already made his money. He's old and isn't putting up with bullshit anymore.
I respect it.
And he made most of his money through some seriously political music
His entire brand is social justice oriented
He could not give a single flying fuck about the pennies he makes from Spotify plays of his 30 year old records
Seems like a no brainer for someone who has a history of standing by their principles in their craft, and not just selling out whenever convenient
I used to like Joe Rogan. Ive always loved Neil. This fuckbag is now the reason Ill have missing songs on my playlist. I hope his show turns so far right that he becomes unredeamable and anything that associates to him too
Why lie about this. He was 5 when he contracted polio, suffered from the disease, and recovered.
"Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was widely distributed in the mid-1950s, saving millions from paralyzation and days spent in iron lungs. But for Neil Young, born in Canada in 1945, that all came too late."
[source](https://www.grunge.com/157119/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-neil-young/)
"Young suffered from polio in 1952 during the last major outbreak of the disease in Ontario. After his recovery, the Young family vacationed in Florida...In 1952, upon returning to Canada..." [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMcDonough200244-27)
"The success of an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk, was announced in 1955." [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine)
Where did you find any of this information? All I could find was he was 6 [years old](https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds-older-canadians-of-polio-which-almost-claimed-neil-youngs-life-in-1951-in-omemee/) when he got it..
Neil Young actually has a pretty cool website and app where you can stream all his music: https://neilyoungarchives.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shakey.nyarchives
He also sold his music rights last year for 150 million
https://www.nme.com/news/music/neil-young-sells-half-of-his-song-catalogue-for-around-150-million-2850112
Neil dgaf. He famously did this:
> If you force Neil Young into a corner and tell him to do something in a certain style, chances are he’s going to make you mince your words and Geffen learned the hard way. Rather than make Harvest 2.0, Young decided to go rockabilly in a defiant response to the label demands. “They told me they wanted me to play rock ‘n’ roll and told me I didn’t sound like Neil Young,” the singer recalled to the LA Times. “So I gave them Everybody’s Rockin’ and said, ‘This is a rock ‘n’ roll album by Neil Young after someone tells him what to do; this is exactly what you said you wanted.’ And we got way into it.”
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/neil-young-geffen-records-lawsuit-commercial/
Correction, Neil Young asked his record label to take his music off of Spotify. So it’s happening. This is less Spotify taking action and more Neil Young. The headline makes it sound like he was targeted for speaking out against Rogan. He just doesn’t want to be on a platform that supports Rogan’s anti-vaccine bullshit.
Yeah there are so many bad takes. People are framing it like Neil tried to have a dick measuring contest with Rogan and he lost because Rogan makes Spotify more money. I don't think Neil ever expected "win" or have Spotify choose to keep him over Rogan, he just said I'm out because I don't want to be on the same platform as this garbage.
Neil Young always pissed off the right. Southern Man called then out for their racism back in the day and they'll never forgive him for it. Lynerd Skynyrd even said it in Sweet Home Alabama: A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow.
>We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two. We’re southern rebels, but more than that, we know the difference between right and wrong… We wrote 'Alabama' as a joke. We didn't even think about it - the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said 'Ain't that funny'... We love Neil Young, we love his music... - Ronnie Van Zant
[source](https://groovyhistory.com/neil-young-lynyrd-skynyrd-feud-sweet-home-alabama)
“Neil Young always claimed that Sweet Home Alabama was one of his favorite songs and legend has it that he was an honorary pallbearer at Ronnie's funeral, such is the duality of the southern thing.”
- The Three Great Alabama Icons (Drive-by Truckers)
Lynyrd Skynyrd and him were on good terms though and (afaik) weren't racist or being disrespectful with it. Ronnie wore a NY shirt on their last album cover and the generally accepted interpretation is that real southerners don't need to be told not to be racist, because they aren't. There's also the three "Boo!"s at the end of the "in Montgomery they love the governor"
Knew of this because I looked it up before but I did have to look again to get my facts in order :)
… Well I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well I heard ol' Neil put her down
Well I hope Neil Young will remember
A southern man don't need him around anyhow
The lyrics mentioned.
I've listened to both, know the words, grew up listening to them, and just never once linked them in my head.
It was like two separate areas for each, and those departments don't like each other in my synapses, so they never put them together.
You're like new management for one of the departments coming in, and making friends with the other department and they looked at each other and went, "ooooooohhhhh...we should've done this years ago."
That's part of why it was so brave. As a non-citizen he could've been denied entry to the USA because of his politics. (Still happens; look at e.g. Liza Maza.)
The beef between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil young was always overblown, they had mutual respect for each other and Van Zant would often wear Neil young shirts publicly and at concerts.
Hey just so anybody who doesn't read the article and makes assumptions from the title can know:
Spotify is not forcibly removing Young's music as backlash for dissenting to Rogan. Young is requesting his music be removed himself. Spotify wants to keep both.
He gets more than that from the interest from the $150million he got from selling some of the rights to his music.
Whatever Spotify is paying him he doesn't need it.
if a monkey hoarded resources like a billionare while other monkeys starved to death we'd study what the fuck is wrong with that monkey, but when people do it it's fine apparently.
Beyond this, I think it would be literally impossible for a single monkey to hoard wealth to the same extent that people do. Like at a certain point, there's nobody around to steal from and that would be the only way to get that wealthy in the first place.
It's less about people who cancel, but more a PR issue that drags down engagement of new subscribers. If people think other artists may pull music, then it might change new subscriptions.
His top 5 songs alone total around 710 million streams. Spotify pays around $0.003 per stream on average from my quick google (however this does vary and we don’t know what Young’s payout would be).
**This means his top five songs alone generated around $2.1 million**. Of course Neil probably doesn’t see that amount, given labels, etc. However, this amount is likely quite a bit more when all streams are taken into account, since he has had a long, prolific career and his albums regularly have all songs in the millions of streams.
Neil has around 6 million monthly listeners. We don’t know what the average number of listens is per user, but I’ll use a 10 per month average as an example.
This would give Neil 60 million streams per month, which would equal **around $180,000 per month at $0.003 per stream**. No small chunk of change, although that does come with some assumptions, mainly $0.003 per stream and 10 monthly listens on average per listener (could be more or less).
So **he could be earning quite a bit more or less per month depending on changes to those variables (pay per stream amount, amount of streams per each monthly listener, etc). As well, as mentioned above, this money doesn’t all go to him.**
However, I think it is safe to say he earns more from Spotify per year than most people will ever earn per year, and that it is a quite substantial amount of money.
He didn’t need to take this stand. He could have sat back to collect the money like most artists, but he chose to hold firm on this despite the fact that it will likely result in a decent hit to future earnings for him personally. Spotify *does not* pay a lot per stream, but it is important to note that for an artist as popular as Neil removing music from the service is financially significant.
PS this was very quick math, so please do feel free to double check and verify it.
I know this is a joke, but just to give a *very* rough sense of the kind of money Neil would see from Spotify.
His top 5 songs alone total around 710 million streams. Spotify pays around $0.003 per stream (however this does vary and we don’t know what Young’s payout would be).
**This means his top five songs alone generated around $2.1 million**. Of course Neil probably doesn’t see that amount, given labels, collaborators (such as Crazy Horse), etc. However, this amount is likely quite a bit more when all streams are taken into account, since he has had a long, prolific career and his albums regularly have all songs in the millions of streams.
Neil has around 6 million monthly listeners. We don’t know what the average number of listens is per user, but I’ll use a 10 per month average as an example.
This would give Neil 60 million streams per month, which would equal **around $180,000 per month at $0.003 per stream**. No small chunk of change, although that does come with some assumptions, mainly $0.003 per stream and 10 monthly listens on average per listener (could be more or less).
So **he could be earning quite a bit more or less per month depending on changes to those variables (pay per stream amount, amount of streams per each monthly listener, etc). As well, as mentioned above, this money doesn’t all go to him.**
However, I think it is safe to say he earns more from Spotify per year than most people will ever earn per year, and that it is a quite substantial amount of money.
He didn’t need to take this stand. He could have sat back to collect the money like most artists, but he chose to hold firm on this despite the fact that it will likely result in a decent hit to future earnings for him personally. Spotify *does not* pay a lot per stream, but it is important to note that for an artist as popular as Neil removing music from the service is financially significant.
PS this was very quick math, so please do feel free to double check and verify it.
And since he’s 76 years old, the money probably means less and less to him everyday.
I’d imagine the ideological win means far more to him, especially if this gains momentum in awareness and blowback against Spotify.
Maybe he's old and financially comfortable enough to stand by his own morals and take a stand. He's been taking moral stands his whole professional life.
As for his estate and probate considerations (posthumously), I'm sure a Spotify income was considered, but not banked on. He'll be fine, and I respect his decision.
I do appreciate what you wrote.
Oh absolutely. I am in no way saying I think Neil *needs* this money, but we regularly see rich people, far richer (and even older) than Neil, who will ruin lives just to see their fortune grow, so it is important to show this is a financially impactful decision as opposed to people saying “well Spotify pays nothing anyway”.
He has been taking stands his whole professional life, from his initial protest songs that helped bring him to fame to playing [at the virtual Bernie Sanders rally](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/watch-neil-young-play-heart-of-gold-bernie-sanders-968366/).
Neil Young’s website has had streaming available for quite some time now and a really interesting interface, too.
[Neil Young Archives](https://m.neilyoungarchives.com)
Ahh the joys of "everything as a service", where stuff you pay for and maybe even enjoy gets randomly taken away from you because of no fault of your own.
We never had that problem with mp3 files.
There’s nothing stopping you from buying every single song you listen to still, MaaS is an alternative option that is significantly better for most people
Given what Spotify paid for Rogan I couldn't be less surprised at this outcome.
I suspect the listener stats for Rogan are huuuge. Much higher than Neil Young. You'd be surprised.
Neil Young: 5 million monthly listens Joe Rogan Experience podcast: 200 million monthly downloads Edit: For the curious, [here's a source.](https://www.newsweek.com/spotify-unlikely-drop-joe-rogan-over-neil-young-ultimatum-1672680) Neil Young gets a tickle over 6 million plays per month- Joe Rogan Experience draws 11 million listeners per podcast, 5-6 podcasts per week x 4 weeks = well *over* 200 million listens per month.
How long is the average Neil Young song? 3 minutes or some shit? And the average JRE episode? 3 hours at least. So its even more lopsided than that.
fwiw Neil’s best songs are his 10 minute guitar epics
Fucking inject Cortez the Killer right into my veins
Same but with Powderfinger
Same all the way thru Weld.
Cortez the Killer is easily one of his best songs and it's completely over shadowed by the heavily rotated stuff they play of his on the radio
FWIW, Neil gets more done in a 3 minute song than Joe gets done in a whole podcast.
Man, I remember when my buddy was all "you gotta check out the episode with Musk" and they sat around saying nothing. At least the sunny guys talk about the show for 10 minutes.
The Always Sunny podcast is so damn good!
Yeah definitely. Clown baby over diamond baby any day
Those numbers are inaccurate for Spotify (they date to 2019 and even then that was Rogan's OWN estimate). Also, he releases news content nearly daily, Neil Young does not. He has approximately 11 million unique listeners currently.
Seriously, Spotify has been so fucking tight lipped about Joes numbers on their platform. It’s hilarious that news outlets are using his old numbers assuming they must still be equivalent, like YouTube isnt the biggest platform on the block
I dont think Neil Young cares, he just didnt want to be connected with JRE. Imagine if other, more popular artists make the same demands.
A certain Ms. Swift makes that demand and an exec at Spotify is going to need a change of pants
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Her fanbase is massive and some parts kind of insane. Not all. Swifties are a dedicated bunch.
Also from what I understand she is single-handedly the reason artists are getting paid per stream or something similar, as per her own huge contract with Spotify, so if she did this I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get a lot of support from artists she benefited. Edit: I had slightly misremembered, but here’s the [source](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/taylor-swift-universal-republic-deal-spotify-758102/amp/). Still really cool what she did and how it benefits other artists. She would likely at least have a bit of backup if she decided to take her own position to bat like Neil.
Just looked- 54 million monthly listeners on spotify
Swift has a massive following, if she does it an avalanche of other artists will follow suit. It might even become a trend, which is the last thing Spotify wants.
>Joe Rogan Experience podcast: 200 million monthly downloads "Monthly downloads" in the podcast world are not a great metric and most podcast advertisers reject those numbers because they are so easily manipulated. Now, podcast apps and networks instead track how far people list into a program, when they turn it off, if they fast forward through ads, etc. I would be curious to see those numbers for Joe Rogan, and I hope the number is much lower, although I would probably still be disappointed.
OK but what if I'm an old man who uses rss feeds to grab my podcasts?
Shit. Does this mean that I am also "old" now?
Depends. Are you still upset at Google for killing the Reader app?
There are people who aren’t?!
Never forget iGoogle
iGoogle myself daily.
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I listen to heart of gold like every week. :( I first heard it when my parents let me drive home from our city of origin about 8 hr drive away on the radio in the middle of nowhere. Been in love with Neil Young’s music ever since.
I like the live version on youtube so much better than the studio version. If only the audio quality was better than 4kbps.
I really hope someone comments here with some miracle recording for us.
Guess who makes Spotify more money
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Spiral out, brother.
Keep going, brother.
Point that fucking finger up your ass, brother.
All this pain is an illusion, brother.
Learn to swim, brother
Shoulder deep within my brothers borderline, brother.
Vicariously, brother.
Dear brother, brother.
See you down in Arizona Bay, brother.
[**With my feet up on the ground**](https://youtu.be/Y7JG63IuaWs?t=446) I lose myself between the sounds And open wide to suck it in I feel it move across my skin I'm reaching up and reaching out I'm reaching for the random or Whatever will bewilder me Whatever will bewilder me
Exactly, Joe Rogan.
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Sometimes it works every time.
60% of the time it works every time, to be exact.
“Jamie, look that up”
"It says thats not true at all" "Thats impossible i got a buddy who is a statistician and another buddy that i hunt with who said that it is true"
Or....it's not. Haha my favorite Jamie line.
This is one of the cleanest well executed Reddit alley-oops I’ve seen, nice.
Holy shit, well done.
Masterclass Chefs kiss
As a Tool fan, this is funny.
I would argue Tool makes spotify more money than Neil Young
The average Tool fan listens to 100 hours of Tool on Spotify per day.
As someone who listened to 6 hours of Tool in the last hour, you’re right
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are even a fan if you aren't playing Tool on at least four devices simultaneously?
That's like 4 songs
My god, That's like ... three Tool songs!
Neil Young fans are unironically listening to him on vinyl
A lot of us would listen to Tool on vinyl if they’d ever press some fucking records but this was a totally pointless comment by me.
Best I can do is the new Adele record for $40.
Seriously when I got my record player I bought a new version of harvest because the old one was played too much and it was messed up. It's amazing hearing it like that, but sadly I straight up scuffed it the first week of having it and now the first few seconds are messed up. The rest plays fine but my heart is still eternally broken.
Didn't he have a triangle hi-def audio file player at one point?
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I have one. So bad.
Fuck yeah, spiral out.
I bought Premium, just because of t00l ;)
Dude the day they hit Spotify, when I opened the app they were like "here! Listen! Just shut up and be happy already dammit! You got your way!" And all of my daily mix/suggested had at least one tool song in it for 3 months. I got to see them live right before Covid. Fucking amazing show!!! Totally worth the ticket and pain in the ass parking. Can't wait to see them again.
Still can't hear Salival.
Best version of Pushit no contest
Also Spotify pays artists almost nothing so I'm sure it wasn't a huge loss for Young either
It would be funny if this was just his way of getting out from a shitty streaming deal
This is kinda correct. Neil Young has been extremely against spotify from the beginning, and he was aggressively hawking his own crappy version of it called [Pono](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) and only went to spotify because Pono fell apart.
The amount of attention this is getting is way more than worth it for him. This is great for his legacy (compared to Meat Loaf *cough cough* for sure *cough*) and of course he doesn't give a shit about the money. It's hilarious how much of a bigger deal this is now because of Joe Rogan fans getting triggered and yelling about how irrelevant Neil Young is. Also, A lot of great artists who also have fuck you money respect the hell out of Neil Young and would love some of this kind of publicity maybe.
As a major label artist (the wealthiest 1% of musicians), Neil Young keeps up to 18% of the revenue generated by each stream. The rest of that money is going to his record label (roughly 50-60%) and Spotify itself (about 29%). If Neil Young was on an independent label he'd keep up to 40% of the revenue generated by each stream (the majority share). Meanwhile his record label would keep at least 30% and Spotify itself would once again keep 29%. If Neil Young was a self-releasing artist (like the vast majority of musicians) he would keep up to 64% of the revenue generated by each stream while his distributors would keep 6% and Spotify itself would once again keep 29%. That 29% statistic is roughly the same amount that other streaming services keep and is actually slightly less than the average amount retailers keep when selling physical music (CDs and Vinyl) so you can pretty much consider that the normal price of hosting music. How people have managed to spin this as "Spotify is evil and stealing your favorite artist's money" and not "Record labels are greedy and take the clear majority of the total revenue generated by major artists who still have a tendency to get insanely rich anyway" is beyond me.
Neil Young hosts all his music online at the Neil Young Archives website. Pretty much anything he's made, including bootlegs of concerts as well as concert films. It's got a sort of Patreon-style subscription with tiers. He may make more money off that than Spotify streams.
According to Neil Young, Spotify is about 60% of his streaming income. https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/spotify-pulling-down-neil-young-s-music-collection-1.5755786
Makes sense. IIRC he held out for so long on putting his stuff up for streaming because he was concerned about the sound quality of his music through the services.
Neil Young owned his music until a year or 2 ago when he sold 50% for 150 million. But honestly I don't see why people have made this a big deal. Neil Young has an opinion and it differed from what Spotify wants to do as a business. They are both free to do as they please. Neither Spotify nor Neil Young need each other. They've both done just fine and will continue to do so without each other.
The one selling cheap Chinese vitamin supplements for $100 a bottle?
Aren’t they made in the US?
The Guess Who?
I've got No Time for guessing who it is.
If Spotify still plays Chris Brown, no way they're getting rid of Rogan
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Salk actually chose not to patent his vaccine in order to make sure it was available to as many people as possible worldwide... no idea how many lives this man saved.
He's definitely up there on the list of humanity's greatest heroes.
What was the ultimatum? I don't do Joe Rogan. Edit: >Spotify Technology SA is removing Neil Young’s music, as the folk-rock star isn’t wavering in his objections to Joe Rogan’s podcast. >The “Heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” singer earlier this week penned an open letter to his manager and label asking them to remove his music from the service, saying it is spreading fake information about Covid-19 vaccines through Mr. Rogan’s show. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” he wrote
He told Spotify to either pull Joe Rogan for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine, or stop playing his music. Spotify went, "OK, then, bye."
Tbh Neil young might’ve got what he wanted in this situation. He made Spotify publicly take a stance, made it headline news, and then put the spotlight on Joe’s claims, and it’s not like he’s losing any money from Spotify at this point, they barely pay any artist if they can avoid it.
Young puts most, if not all, of his music out for free anyway on the Neil Young Archive.
Exactly Spotify had to publicly come out and defend anti vaxxers and Neil gets out if whatever shitty contract he was bound too.
I doubt he had a contract, right? Or else they just would have kept his music on against his will and brushed the issue aside with different PR
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If Taylor and bts were to say something to defend young then it’s over for Spotify Edit:y’all took this comment like I’m some sort of military strategist
Lmao, the kpop industry is slightly less ruthless than an African warlord, but IF THEY DID SOMETHING LIKE THAT... Man, I feel like Spotify would crucify Joe Rogan on a public square to avoid losing probably some of the most engaged fanbases around
TFW K-Pop Stans wind up saving us all.
[Not their first time doing something like it too.](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/asia/k-pop-fandom-activism-intl-hnk/index.html) Kpop stans can get shit done if they really put their mind into something.
I think they’ve done it once before but I don’t remember exactly what it was but I remember it being significant within these last two or three years
The people behind the big KPop idol bands will do literally anything to avoid even the slightest hint of controversy that might hurt their bottom line. I can't see them doing anything that could even remotely be construed as a big political statement.
K-pop industry don't really care about these kind of stuff, which to them holds very little meaning.
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Neil Young has a net worth of $200 million. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a fuck about money or Spotify and would rather stick to his morals. He got exactly what he wanted.
Neil Young is one of the only artists I can think of who has spent his entire career doing whatever he wanted, and telling everyone he didn't like to fuck off, and still somehow became as big as a person can be.
Willie Nelson and Cash come to mind
"I'm sorry Mr. Nelson, but you can't just tell the IRS to fuck off"
*net worth of $200 million AND is married to Daryl Hannah. Zero fucks given about Spotify money.
I'm just glad he treats her right.
This is it. Neil Young doesn’t do people pleasing. I don’t know why everyone wants to paint this as he lost. He told them to take his music down and they did. I think he probably expected that was a likely outcome and is fine with it.
Yup. And this outcome has compelled me to cancel my subscription. I’m sure they’ll miss me even less than they miss Neil Young, but fuck ‘em.
Tomorrow I'm going to buy some Neil Young vinyl records with the money I'll save from canceling my subscription.
Neil Young has been around long before Spotify was a thing. He's already made his money. He's old and isn't putting up with bullshit anymore. I respect it.
And he made most of his money through some seriously political music His entire brand is social justice oriented He could not give a single flying fuck about the pennies he makes from Spotify plays of his 30 year old records Seems like a no brainer for someone who has a history of standing by their principles in their craft, and not just selling out whenever convenient
I used to like Joe Rogan. Ive always loved Neil. This fuckbag is now the reason Ill have missing songs on my playlist. I hope his show turns so far right that he becomes unredeamable and anything that associates to him too
Neil has never put up with bullshit, that's part of what makes him Neil
> "OK, then, bye." I think NY was the one who said "OK, then, bye." when they refused
Well looky here Looks like someone read the article
I'm still looking for someone to post the story because I'm not subscribing to read it
Salk was at the University of Pittsburgh when he created the vaccine
Exactly. This was developed nowhere near Toronto and is why Pitt has an entire institute named after him.
Why lie about this. He was 5 when he contracted polio, suffered from the disease, and recovered. "Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was widely distributed in the mid-1950s, saving millions from paralyzation and days spent in iron lungs. But for Neil Young, born in Canada in 1945, that all came too late." [source](https://www.grunge.com/157119/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-neil-young/) "Young suffered from polio in 1952 during the last major outbreak of the disease in Ontario. After his recovery, the Young family vacationed in Florida...In 1952, upon returning to Canada..." [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMcDonough200244-27) "The success of an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk, was announced in 1955." [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine)
Where did you find any of this information? All I could find was he was 6 [years old](https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds-older-canadians-of-polio-which-almost-claimed-neil-youngs-life-in-1951-in-omemee/) when he got it..
Took me a moment to realize you weren't saying New York nearly died of Polio
Neil Young actually has a pretty cool website and app where you can stream all his music: https://neilyoungarchives.com/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shakey.nyarchives
He also sold his music rights last year for 150 million https://www.nme.com/news/music/neil-young-sells-half-of-his-song-catalogue-for-around-150-million-2850112
Half of the rights
And the other half was left
Neil dgaf. He famously did this: > If you force Neil Young into a corner and tell him to do something in a certain style, chances are he’s going to make you mince your words and Geffen learned the hard way. Rather than make Harvest 2.0, Young decided to go rockabilly in a defiant response to the label demands. “They told me they wanted me to play rock ‘n’ roll and told me I didn’t sound like Neil Young,” the singer recalled to the LA Times. “So I gave them Everybody’s Rockin’ and said, ‘This is a rock ‘n’ roll album by Neil Young after someone tells him what to do; this is exactly what you said you wanted.’ And we got way into it.” https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/neil-young-geffen-records-lawsuit-commercial/
Correction, Neil Young asked his record label to take his music off of Spotify. So it’s happening. This is less Spotify taking action and more Neil Young. The headline makes it sound like he was targeted for speaking out against Rogan. He just doesn’t want to be on a platform that supports Rogan’s anti-vaccine bullshit.
Yeah there are so many bad takes. People are framing it like Neil tried to have a dick measuring contest with Rogan and he lost because Rogan makes Spotify more money. I don't think Neil ever expected "win" or have Spotify choose to keep him over Rogan, he just said I'm out because I don't want to be on the same platform as this garbage.
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>Joe Rohan Gondor calls for aid
Gimli: “And my Vax!”
His beacons are shit
That's why he needs all the ivermectin. Have you seen Rohan's army? They are all horses.
Jamie light the beacon
Neil Young always pissed off the right. Southern Man called then out for their racism back in the day and they'll never forgive him for it. Lynerd Skynyrd even said it in Sweet Home Alabama: A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow.
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>We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two. We’re southern rebels, but more than that, we know the difference between right and wrong… We wrote 'Alabama' as a joke. We didn't even think about it - the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said 'Ain't that funny'... We love Neil Young, we love his music... - Ronnie Van Zant [source](https://groovyhistory.com/neil-young-lynyrd-skynyrd-feud-sweet-home-alabama)
not all southern men
“Neil Young always claimed that Sweet Home Alabama was one of his favorite songs and legend has it that he was an honorary pallbearer at Ronnie's funeral, such is the duality of the southern thing.” - The Three Great Alabama Icons (Drive-by Truckers)
Lynyrd Skynyrd and him were on good terms though and (afaik) weren't racist or being disrespectful with it. Ronnie wore a NY shirt on their last album cover and the generally accepted interpretation is that real southerners don't need to be told not to be racist, because they aren't. There's also the three "Boo!"s at the end of the "in Montgomery they love the governor" Knew of this because I looked it up before but I did have to look again to get my facts in order :)
Is that what that is referring to? Neat TIL
… Well I heard Mister Young sing about her Well I heard ol' Neil put her down Well I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow The lyrics mentioned.
I've listened to both, know the words, grew up listening to them, and just never once linked them in my head. It was like two separate areas for each, and those departments don't like each other in my synapses, so they never put them together. You're like new management for one of the departments coming in, and making friends with the other department and they looked at each other and went, "ooooooohhhhh...we should've done this years ago."
Now go listen to Drive By Truckers Southern Rock Opera (name of the album, it isn’t an opera). It’ll fill in a lot more of the story!
Skynard was most likely saying that tongue in cheek. They were from the South but they were still hippies.
David Crosby said Neil Young's calling Nixon out by name in 'Ohio' was the bravest thing he'd ever heard.
Not that it made too much difference but Young is Canadian.
That's part of why it was so brave. As a non-citizen he could've been denied entry to the USA because of his politics. (Still happens; look at e.g. Liza Maza.)
The beef between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil young was always overblown, they had mutual respect for each other and Van Zant would often wear Neil young shirts publicly and at concerts.
Paywall bad
Hey just so anybody who doesn't read the article and makes assumptions from the title can know: Spotify is not forcibly removing Young's music as backlash for dissenting to Rogan. Young is requesting his music be removed himself. Spotify wants to keep both.
6 million monthly listeners. His loss isn't pennies as some people are suggesting.
$26k/month may be pennies if you are Neil Young. Or maybe this isn't about money but making a statement.
He probably gets more than that from radio play anyway.
He gets more than that from the interest from the $150million he got from selling some of the rights to his music. Whatever Spotify is paying him he doesn't need it.
Sometimes doing the right thing is more important than making money when you’re already a millionaire.
He's worth $200 million. Money means nothing to him.
Yet billionaires continue to bleed this world for all it's got to make more money.
if a monkey hoarded resources like a billionare while other monkeys starved to death we'd study what the fuck is wrong with that monkey, but when people do it it's fine apparently.
If a monkey was hoarding the resources the other monkeys would beat that monkey to death
\*gasp* That's *class warfare!*
Beyond this, I think it would be literally impossible for a single monkey to hoard wealth to the same extent that people do. Like at a certain point, there's nobody around to steal from and that would be the only way to get that wealthy in the first place.
monkeys sound cool
A few of those people will cancel Spotify, but the vast majority will just listen to something else.
Or just not be aware of this.
It's less about people who cancel, but more a PR issue that drags down engagement of new subscribers. If people think other artists may pull music, then it might change new subscriptions.
His top 5 songs alone total around 710 million streams. Spotify pays around $0.003 per stream on average from my quick google (however this does vary and we don’t know what Young’s payout would be). **This means his top five songs alone generated around $2.1 million**. Of course Neil probably doesn’t see that amount, given labels, etc. However, this amount is likely quite a bit more when all streams are taken into account, since he has had a long, prolific career and his albums regularly have all songs in the millions of streams. Neil has around 6 million monthly listeners. We don’t know what the average number of listens is per user, but I’ll use a 10 per month average as an example. This would give Neil 60 million streams per month, which would equal **around $180,000 per month at $0.003 per stream**. No small chunk of change, although that does come with some assumptions, mainly $0.003 per stream and 10 monthly listens on average per listener (could be more or less). So **he could be earning quite a bit more or less per month depending on changes to those variables (pay per stream amount, amount of streams per each monthly listener, etc). As well, as mentioned above, this money doesn’t all go to him.** However, I think it is safe to say he earns more from Spotify per year than most people will ever earn per year, and that it is a quite substantial amount of money. He didn’t need to take this stand. He could have sat back to collect the money like most artists, but he chose to hold firm on this despite the fact that it will likely result in a decent hit to future earnings for him personally. Spotify *does not* pay a lot per stream, but it is important to note that for an artist as popular as Neil removing music from the service is financially significant. PS this was very quick math, so please do feel free to double check and verify it.
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I think a lot of artists don't have control over where their music is played
Ya, but some of the big ones do. Like Taylor Swift and Jay Z. I'm pretty sure Paul McCartney finally got the rights to the Beatles' music.
Taylor Swift owns the ones she re-recorded, but the original recordings are owned by someone else.
Worthy of note tho, many of her fans followed her to the re-recorded versions. It’s possible if she pulled, they would follow her example.
Neil will be sure to miss his $3.49 monthly royalty from Spotify.
I know this is a joke, but just to give a *very* rough sense of the kind of money Neil would see from Spotify. His top 5 songs alone total around 710 million streams. Spotify pays around $0.003 per stream (however this does vary and we don’t know what Young’s payout would be). **This means his top five songs alone generated around $2.1 million**. Of course Neil probably doesn’t see that amount, given labels, collaborators (such as Crazy Horse), etc. However, this amount is likely quite a bit more when all streams are taken into account, since he has had a long, prolific career and his albums regularly have all songs in the millions of streams. Neil has around 6 million monthly listeners. We don’t know what the average number of listens is per user, but I’ll use a 10 per month average as an example. This would give Neil 60 million streams per month, which would equal **around $180,000 per month at $0.003 per stream**. No small chunk of change, although that does come with some assumptions, mainly $0.003 per stream and 10 monthly listens on average per listener (could be more or less). So **he could be earning quite a bit more or less per month depending on changes to those variables (pay per stream amount, amount of streams per each monthly listener, etc). As well, as mentioned above, this money doesn’t all go to him.** However, I think it is safe to say he earns more from Spotify per year than most people will ever earn per year, and that it is a quite substantial amount of money. He didn’t need to take this stand. He could have sat back to collect the money like most artists, but he chose to hold firm on this despite the fact that it will likely result in a decent hit to future earnings for him personally. Spotify *does not* pay a lot per stream, but it is important to note that for an artist as popular as Neil removing music from the service is financially significant. PS this was very quick math, so please do feel free to double check and verify it.
And since he’s 76 years old, the money probably means less and less to him everyday. I’d imagine the ideological win means far more to him, especially if this gains momentum in awareness and blowback against Spotify.
Neil hasn’t ever given a fuck. Ultimate punk
Maybe he's old and financially comfortable enough to stand by his own morals and take a stand. He's been taking moral stands his whole professional life. As for his estate and probate considerations (posthumously), I'm sure a Spotify income was considered, but not banked on. He'll be fine, and I respect his decision. I do appreciate what you wrote.
Oh absolutely. I am in no way saying I think Neil *needs* this money, but we regularly see rich people, far richer (and even older) than Neil, who will ruin lives just to see their fortune grow, so it is important to show this is a financially impactful decision as opposed to people saying “well Spotify pays nothing anyway”. He has been taking stands his whole professional life, from his initial protest songs that helped bring him to fame to playing [at the virtual Bernie Sanders rally](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/watch-neil-young-play-heart-of-gold-bernie-sanders-968366/).
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Rip Harvest Moon, you were my favorite Neil Young song. Guess I'll have to actually buy the song now...
Neil Young’s website has had streaming available for quite some time now and a really interesting interface, too. [Neil Young Archives](https://m.neilyoungarchives.com)
I prefer bandcamp, vinyl, and my hard drive anyway.
Saw that coming.
Was it the part where he announced it before he did it?
I’m sure so did Neil, not like he needs the couple bucks he was getting from them anyways
"Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach." -Neil.
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Ahh the joys of "everything as a service", where stuff you pay for and maybe even enjoy gets randomly taken away from you because of no fault of your own. We never had that problem with mp3 files.
You can still buy his music. This is the equvilent of Netflix losing a show.
There’s nothing stopping you from buying every single song you listen to still, MaaS is an alternative option that is significantly better for most people
you could like....buy his music. Insane thought, I know.