Neil Young Demands Spotify Remove His Music Over Joe Rogan’s Vaccine Comments

Mr. Young, whose hits including “Heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” have gained hundreds of millions of plays on Spotify, wrote an open letter to his manager and record label criticizing Mr. Rogan and Spotify. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines—potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote. The letter has since been removed from his website.

Mr. Young didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The letter came in response to “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, which is currently Spotify’s most popular podcast and also tops

Apple’s

podcasting charts. In 2020, Mr. Rogan signed an exclusive podcasting deal with Spotify, worth more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform,” Mr. Young wrote in the letter. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform…They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

While Mr. Young’s label,

Warner Music Group Corp.

’s Warner Records, is the licensor to Spotify and may legally have control over how and where his music is distributed, it is typical for a record company to take an artist’s wishes into account. An act of Mr. Young’s cachet in particular tends to have more control over their career and creative output. If a decision is reached to remove the music, Spotify could take it down in a matter of hours, according to people familiar with the matter.

Streaming accounts for 84% of recorded music revenue in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Spotify is by far the largest music-streaming service by paid subscriptions.

Mr. Young’s letter cited an episode of the podcast in which Mr. Rogan spoke with

Dr. Robert Malone,

a virologist who worked on research into several mRNA Covid-19 vaccines but who is now critical of the treatments. Among the claims made was the suggestion that hospitals have been financially motivated to falsely diagnose deaths as having been caused by Covid-19.

Mr. Rogan has regularly used his podcast to discuss Covid-19 vaccines and restrictions, railing against vaccine mandates for indoor events and suggesting that young, healthy people shouldn’t be vaccinated.

Spotify’s bet on Mr. Rogan’s show has caused trouble in the past for the audiostreaming company. Some employees expressed concern over the podcast’s content during a town-hall meeting in September 2020, relating to material they felt was anti-transgender, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company stood by its star podcaster, with Chief Executive

Daniel Ek

saying that the ambition to make Spotify the “largest audio platform in the world” involves embracing diverse voices and differing opinions as the company chases scale in podcasting.

“The most important thing for us is to have very clear policies in place,” he said in an interview a month after the town hall. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Joe Rogan or anyone else, we do apply those policies and they need to be evenly applied.”

Earlier this month, a group of 270 scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter to Spotify accusing the podcast of “promoting baseless conspiracy theories” and asking the service to take action against mass-misinformation events on its platform.

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” it said.

Since the start of the pandemic, Spotify has removed over 20,000 Covid-related podcast episodes as a result of creators violating its policies, according to a person familiar with the matter. While more than 40 of Mr. Rogan’s episodes have been removed, none of them have been related to the pandemic, this person said.

Mr. Young also launched his own streaming service in 2018 called the “

Neil Young

Archives,” which offers different yearly subscriptions ranging from $19.99 to $99.99 to access the artist’s albums.

Mr. Young has previously had issues with streaming platforms. In 2015, he said he didn’t need his content “to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution” and that he was pulling his music from streaming services. The artist’s music returned to Spotify in 2016. “That’s where people get music,” he later told Rolling Stone.

Monday’s letter wasn’t the first time the outspoken 76-year-old has used his website to take on big companies in the music business. Last summer, Mr. Young criticized concert promoters in a post, calling live shows super-spreader events and wondering why more artists weren’t canceling shows.

—Allison Prang contributed to this article.

Write to Anne Steele at anne.steele@wsj.com and Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Some Spotify employees expressed concern over the content of Joe Rogan’s podcast during a town-hall meeting in September 2020. An earlier version of this article suggested that the town-hall meeting took place last September. (Corrected on Jan. 25)