Spotify has been put into a tough position with the community as many musicians and artists are pulling their music from the site in protest to the Joe Rogan Experience. 

In recent episodes of the Spotify exclusive podcasts, host Joe Rogan has been spreading misinformation on the state of COVID-19 and COVID vaccines. Rogan is an avid conspiracist theorist and has been spreading many intentionally dangerous theories on the vaccines

“If you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young, and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this,” Rogan said.

This is not the first time Rogan has said controversial things about the ongoing pandemic. He has even previously recommended other treatment options in place of the vaccine.

“This doctor was saying ivermectin is 99 percent effective in treating Covid,” Rogan said. “But you don’t hear about it because you can’t fund vaccines when it’s an effective treatment.”

While Rogan has gone back on some of his previous statements and is vaccinated, the damage has been done. Many artists have pulled their music from Spotify to protest the site from supposedly supporting these claims. 

“I support free speech,” Neil Young said, “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 was the first to pull his music from the site with many following suites. Many big musicians like Joni Mitchel, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills have also pulled their music from the service.

“We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast,” said Crosby. “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.”

With all of this going on Rogan has pulled many of those podcast episodes down. He did so on his own accord with the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, stating he did not have to do this.

“While I strongly condemn what Joe has said, I want to make one point very clear, I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” Ek said. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.” 

While no one knows if the protesting artists will return their music to Spotify, the Joe Rogan Experience will continue to be a Spotify exclusive on the streaming platform.

“My pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives, so we can maybe find a better point of view,” Rogan said. “I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan.”