In solidarity with bandmate Neil Young in his battle with Spotify, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills (you know, CSN) are removing their discographies from Spotify.
Although CSN has a lengthy history of disagreements, they have chosen to put them aside in support of on-again, off-again bandmate Young’s protest of Spotify’s practices. Young removed his music last week after Spotify refused to stop platforming The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast that has spread COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.
Nash has already begun removing his solo music from the platform, with Crosby’s and Stills’ solo projects soon to follow. Recordings from CSNY and CSN will also be removed shortly. Several other artists have pulled their music from the streaming platform amid the controversy including Joni Mitchell, India.Arie, Failure and Nils Lofgren.
The controversy started about COVID-19 misinformation but has become an opportunity for artists to protest Spotify as a whole. Artists have called Spotify’s business model exploitative to artists, as they earn only a fraction of a cent per stream.
“We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast,” the band members said in a joint statement. “While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences. Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music – or the music we made together – to be on the same platform.”
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