Neil Young returns to Spotify after boycotting it over Joe Rogan’s vaccine comments

Neil Young is returning to Spotify after boycotting the platform more than two years ago, he said in a new blog post. The Canadian singer ditched the platform over vaccine misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast, later saying he was fed up with Spotify’s “crappy” sound quality anyway.

Young is back because Rogan’s podcast is no longer exclusive to Spotify. “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon began serving up the same disinformation podcast features I opposed on Spotify,” he said, without being specific The Joe Rogan experience.

There’s no way he could pull his catalog from Apple Music and Amazon as well, he added, “because my music wouldn’t be streaming for music lovers at all” if he did. Young also expressed hope that Spotify will improve its audio quality, while calling out Quobuz and Tidal for offering its songs in high resolution.

“Spotify, you can do it! Really be number 1 in every way. You have the music and the listeners!!!! Start with limited Hi res and build up from there!” he wrote. (Spotify has announced that it will launch a HiFi tier as early as 2021, but has yet to do so.)

Her fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell joined Young in the boycott and her music is still missing from the platform. Both had reason to be angry about the vaccine misinformation on Rogan’s show, as both were polio victims — a disease that was deleted in North America thanks to vaccines.

It’s hard to say how Young’s boycott affected Spotify, but it certainly affected its finances. Last year, billboard appreciated that the removal of his songs from Spotify cost him an estimated $300,000 in lost music recordings and publishing royalties.