Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify this week, describing the platform as “the home of life threatening COVID misinformation” due to its association with controversial yet extremely popular podcast bro Joe Rogan. And today, Young has followed up his open letters explaining his decision with another statement on his Neil Young Archives website addressing the kerfuffle.

“When I left Spotify, I felt better,” Young writes. “I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.”

Young also returns to his old sound quality bugbear — remember Pono? “Digital, rather than reproducing copies of the music as we did back in the analog day, reconstitutes it from 1s and 0s and plays back data that you hear as music,” Young continues. “This allows business people like those who run SPOTIFY to cut the quality right down to 5% of the music’s content.”

He goes on to plug Spotify competitors like Amazon, Apple Music, and Qobuz, which he says “deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing. AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz now deliver the real thing.”

Read Young’s full statement below.

When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better.

Digital music has been with us about 40 years now. Digital, rather than reproducing copies of the music as we did back in the analog day, reconstitutes it from 1s and 0s and plays back data that you hear as music.

This allows business people like those who run SPOTIFY to cut the quality right down to 5% of the music’s content. It’s just math. It’s easy to do that with digital, thus allowing more songs and less music to stream faster. That’s because 95% is missing. Thats what SPOTIFY the Tech company does. SPOTIFY then sells you the downgraded music.

When I started everyone got to hear all the music. 100%.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz now deliver the real thing. SPOTIFY is ripping you off and has been since day 1. No goosebumps from SPOTIFY sound!

Switch to one of the alternatives – companies that support the arts. Real sound is available there. AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz You just have to leave Spotify and go to a new place that truly cares about music quality.

I met Danile Ek when he started SPOTIFY. it sounded to me like he was really going to be getting into it. That was a long time ago. I wonder what happened.

When I left Spotify, I felt better.

I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.

As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else.

love earth
be well
neil