India Arie is the latest musician to reveal that she is removing her music from Spotify in protest of their support for Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast.
On Monday (Jan. 31), the “Brown Skin” singer took to Instagram to share her decision, saying she was pulling her music and podcast from the streaming platform after musician Neil Young prompted the boycott and “opened a door that I MUST walk through.”
“I believe in freedom of speech,” she added. “However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons OTHER than his Covid interviews…FOR ME ITS ALSO HIS language around race. What I am talking about is RESPECT – who gets it and who doesn’t.”
Arie then went on to blast Spotify for paying artists “a fraction of a penny,” but paying $100 million to Rogan to host the “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “This shows the type of company they are and the company that they keep. I’m tired,” she added.
Young called for artists to follow him in removing their music from Spotify after Rogan kept spewing misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccinations. Recently, he also faced backlash for discussing race on his podcast, including his characterization of “Black” as “someone who is 100 percent African from the darkest place where they’re not wearing any clothes all day and they’ve developed all that melanin to protect them from the sun.”
Rogan has since said that he will try to counteract his views with other individuals’ opinions. “I don’t always get it right,” he said. “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.”
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, said the platform has updated its policies to include a new method to dealing with COVID-19 information. Spotify will now add a content advisory to podcast episodes that contain discussions about Coronavirus.
Check out Arie’s post below.