Koji Shiraki

In late January, Neil Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify in response to The Joe Rogan Experience’s willful platforming of vaccine misinformation—resulting in Young’s catalog’s swift takedown from the streaming service. His critique quickly snowballed, with other notable artists removing their own music in protest of Spotify’s profit off Rogan’s message via an exclusive, $100 million-dollar deal—including Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, and india.arie (who significantly noted Rogan’s “language around race”). Music fans en masse showed their support, opting to #DeleteSpotify and contributing to a company market loss reported between $2.1 billion to $4 billion—meaning an estimated $1 billion plummet in net worth for founder and CEO Daniel Ek due to his stake in the ...