However, Midia Research has a good blog post unpicking the wider strategic dilemmas for Spotify, particularly around content regulation and moderation, using Meta’s recent experiences with regulators as a jump-off point. (To keep things in perspective, Neil Young currently has 6.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify: around 1.6% of its active users.) Is a bigger headache brewing for the company over its decision to choose Rogan over Young? As things stand, other prominent artists have yet to follow his lead, and it’s too early to tell whether listeners unrelated to Music Ally writers are churning to rivals in protest. The channel will play a mixture of old and new tracks, as well as interview footage with Young talking about his latest album.Īll’s fair in love, war and audio-market share, so Spotify won’t be surprised at any of this. US satellite radio firm SiriusXM chose yesterday to announce the return of Neil Young Radio to its service, after a limited run in December. We’ve already seen Apple Music tweet out “It’s always a good idea to stream with a link to his ‘Essentials’ playlist on its service, for example. It will come as no surprise to see rival and adjacent music services picking up on this and trying to capitalise.

This admittedly tiny sample size does make us wonder if Young’s decision to ask for his music to be removed from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan’s Covid-19 views is cutting through from music and tech circles to regular listeners, as the mainstream media picks up on the story. Music Ally’s editorial team received our first message from a relative asking our advice on which music streaming service to switch to from Spotify.

Neil young spotify playlist