On 26 January 2022, Neil Young removed his music from
Spotify: Artists Who Have Joined Neil Young in Removing Their Music. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Failure and Nils Lofgren are among those who've left.
The boycott against Spotify started with Canadian legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, followed by Crosby, Stills and Nash and musician and podcaster India Arie. They're troubled by the service's star podcaster, Joe Rogan, who they say has spread misinformation about COVID-19 on his show, The Joe Rogan Experience.
It would have something to do with licensing or the request of the record label or artist. In this case, Spotify doesn't have control over this as it's up to the individual music companies.
Over the past week, Young's protest has prompted other major artists to break up with the company and some Spotify employees have expressed concerns about its relationship with Rogan. Musicians long frustrated with how little Spotify pays to play their songs are hoping the backlash will force bigger changes.
However, as reported last month, artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have removed their music from Spotify due to the streaming platform's inaction over controversial content, rather than issues around artist remuneration.
In 2014, she removed her catalog due to her belief music should not be free. She wrote an op-ed about it for The Wall Street Journal. “It's my opinion that music should not be free and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will some day decide what an album's price point is,” she wrote.
Swift in 2014 removed her entire catalogue from the streaming site after feeling that they did not value her art. The move was to bring light to how she felt about her own music as well as that of her musical colleagues.
On 26 January 2022, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify after they refused to remove the podcast. Joni Mitchell subsequently removed her music in support of Young. Other artists and podcasters, such as Nils Lofgren, Brené Brown and Crosby, Stills, & Nash, also announced a boycott of Spotify.
Spotify is constantly taking artists to court, seeking ways to pay even less in royalties than they already do. What's more, even that less-than-half a cent is an average, meaning that payout can often be less.
Despite being a laggard in adopting better sound quality, Spotify has been working on adding lossless audio support in a dedicated plan called Spotify HiFi since 2021. Apple Music beats Spotify on streaming quality as it supports up to 24-bit/192kHz, making it one of the best music streaming services for audiophiles.
As per the report, Spotify has expressed its inability to strike a deal with the proprietors of the tunes following the expiration of the previous agreement. Popular tracks like "Malhari" from Bajirao Mastani and the entire album of Kalank are among the songs that were removed from the app.
Streaming platform unable to reach licensing agreement with one of India's largest record labels.
Now playing the greatest hits and dance-floor favorites from The King of Pop! From “Billie Jean” to “Bad,” “Rock With You” to “You Rock My World,” you'll find your favorites here.
The total number of streams (lead artist + features) for Eminem is now over the 40 billion threshold on Spotify.
Spotify pays artists between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average. That works out as an approx revenue split of 70/30 - so that's 70% to the artist/rights holders and 30% to Spotify.
Swift famously removed all her music from Spotify back in 2014, before returning to the streaming service last year. Originally arguing that “music should not be free”, Swift later said that she had returned to Spotify to “thank her fans” after her album '1989' sold over 10 million copies.
By releasing her music on Spotify, Taylor Swift landed a huge blow to Apple Music.
As of 12:01 am Eastern, June 9, 2017, you can now stream every Taylor Swift song on all the major streaming services — even Spotify. As a PR move, this is masterful.
Spotify stock down on Q3 earnings miss
The company's market cap was north of $69 billion. Today, the stock is trading below $80 a share, down roughly 70% in 2022 and off nearly 80% from that record close. Its current market cap? $15 billion.
A new report suggests that streaming service Spotify is in trouble - big trouble. Although Spotify is due to make the leap into the video streaming service, it's looking more and more likely that their plans for expansion may be put on hold indefinitely.
Verdict. Overall, Spotify and Apple Music offer similar services. They're priced similarly, and have roughly the same-sized catalogue. The main benefits Apple Music has are audio quality, with lossless resolutions and Spatial Audio supported on the platform, and live radio.
Apple Music is Apple's streaming music service, comparable to similar streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited, Google Play Music, Tidal, and others, though it has a leg up over many of its competitors with high-quality lossless audio and Spatial Audio support.