Joni Mitchell Removes Music From Spotify in Help of Neil Younger Towards Joe Rogan

Spotify eliminated Mr. Younger’s music on Wednesday after he wrote an open letter to his file label and administration asking them to take it down in objection to Mr. Rogan’s podcast.

Ms. Mitchell, well-known for her 1971 album “Blue,” linked to Mr. Younger’s letter in her transient put up. Mr. Younger, the “Coronary heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” singer mentioned Spotify is spreading pretend details about Covid-19 vaccines by way of Mr. Rogan’s present.

“They will have Rogan or Younger. Not each,” Mr. Younger wrote. He cited an episode of Mr. Rogan’s podcast wherein the podcaster spoke with Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who labored on analysis into a number of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines however who’s now vital of the remedies. Among the many claims made was the suggestion that hospitals have been financially motivated to falsely decide that deaths had been brought on by Covid-19.

Earlier this month, a bunch of 270 scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter to Spotify accusing the podcast of “selling baseless conspiracy theories” and asking the service to take motion towards mass-misinformation occasions on its platform.

Whereas greater than 40 of Mr. Rogan’s episodes have been eliminated for coverage violations, none of them have been associated to the pandemic, in accordance with an individual aware of the matter.

Whereas his preliminary letter has been faraway from his web site, Mr. Younger has since posted extra on the subject, encouraging different artists to affix him.

Each Mr. Younger and Ms. Mitchell are signed to

Warner Music Group Corp.

file labels, which license and distribute their music to streaming providers together with Spotify. The label made a request to take Ms. Mitchell’s music down, which may take a number of hours. The people singers even have the identical supervisor.

Ms. Mitchell, 78 years outdated, had 3.7 million month-to-month listeners and 1.1 million followers on Spotify.

“We would like all of the world’s music and audio content material to be out there to Spotify customers. With that comes nice accountability in balancing each security for listeners and freedom for creators,” a Spotify spokesman mentioned Wednesday as Mr. Younger’s music was coming down from the service. He mentioned the corporate has detailed content material insurance policies and has eliminated over 20,000 Covid-19-related podcast episodes because the begin of the pandemic.

Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com