Over the past year Neil has removed his records, CDs, and streaming music from Amazon in protest of Jeff Bezos’ personal and financial support of Donald Trump and his destruction of the once great Washington Post newspaper.

Now, the final connection to Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the division of Amazon that hosted our website and apps, has been terminated. NYA is now running on DigitalOcean.

Over the past two months, NYA’s software team planned and executed a major upgrade and migration of our music delivery platform from AWS to DigitalOcean, a cloud computing provider whose business practices align more closely with our beliefs.

Once we identified DigitalOcean, our development team worked closely with their technical staff through a series of collaborative sessions to design the new infrastructure, determine the required configurations, and map out each phase of the migration across our cloud storage, servers, databases, and content delivery network.

Beyond the migration itself, we also redesigned and upgraded the streaming workflow to improve speed, scalability, and reliability for our members. The platform architecture was modernized with the introduction of a new “hot storage” layer that temporarily caches popular audio content closer to our members. In simple terms, this allows frequently accessed music segments to be delivered much faster without repeatedly retrieving or processing them from long-term storage.

As a result, members will benefit from faster stream startup times, smoother playback, and quicker downloads across varying network conditions, particularly during periods of peak traffic. Let us know how you like it.

We hope other organizations will also consider moving away from AWS in protest. We at NYA are happy share our experiences.

About Digital Ocean DigitalOcean (https://www.digitalocean.com) was founded in 2012 with the mission to make cloud infrastructure simple, affordable, and accessible for developers and growing businesses. While companies were building platforms optimized for large enterprises, DigitalOcean deliberately focused on the people building software: developers, startups, and small to midsize businesses, who needed reliable infrastructure without the complexity or cost overhead of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. That developer-first philosophy has shaped everything from the company’s pricing model to its documentation, and it’s what’s attracted more than 600,000 customers across 185 countries. Today, DigitalOcean offers a full suite of cloud services. The company went public on the NYSE in 2021 and continues to expand its product portfolio with a particular emphasis on making AI infrastructure accessible to businesses that aren’t Google-scale but still need serious compute.

---

 

 

 

 

By NYA Staff

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has been using his power and wealth to threaten our democracy. During the 2024 election, Musk was the largest individual political donor in American history, spending $288 million to support Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. Musk used his fortune to build a political operation called America PAC. Musk again is preparing to pour enormous sums into Republican campaigns. Reports say he could spend $100 million to $200 million on the midterms. Because of Citizens United, one person with unlimited wealth like Musk, is now able to buy an election.

But Musk's political influence doesn’t stop with campaign contributions. He was given an extraordinary role in the Trump administration through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he became the public face of an effort to shrink the federal government. His approach was more like a demolition derby than reform.

By NYA Staff

Meta Settles

Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims brought by most U.S. states and other jurisdictions. The states accused Meta of deliberately designing its platforms to be addictive, misleading the public about risks to young users, and collecting personal information from children without proper parental consent.

The settlement will prevent more embarrassing information from being revealed showing how Zuckerberg and his team purposely prioritized engagement over safety. All evidence to date has revealed how Zuckerberg showed no concern for the damage his products were causing.

The most significant part of the settlement is what Meta must change. For the next decade, teenagers will generally face a two-hour daily limit on Facebook and Instagram and an overnight block from midnight to 6 a.m., unless parents override the restrictions. Meta also agreed to strengthen age verification, restrict access to age-inappropriate content, turn off push notifications during school hours and hide likes and reactions from teens by default.

Meta will guarantee roughly $12.7 billion in payments over 10 years, with as much as another $5 billion dependent on competing platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat adopting comparable protections.

In short: Meta isn't being forced to abandon Facebook or Instagram, personalized recommendations or targeted advertising. But it is being forced to acknowledge, through billions of dollars and major product changes, that the way it designed its platforms for young users has become a serious public-policy issue.

Note that NYA never liked how Facebook operated once we discovered how they were taking personal data from our address books and adding trackers to follow us from site to site. When most sites offered Facebook to sign onto their sites, we revamped NYA sign-ins to eliminate it. All of this was done to

facilitate the growth of their products that have caused so much harm. As evil as they were then, what’s being revealed in these trials is that they were much worse than anyone imagined.

CASTING ME AWAY FROM YOU is one of my early songs. I think I wrote it in 64 or 65. When we recorded ‘Second Song; early this year I ran out of tunes fast. I only had the 5 new ones, long ones, and I needed more, so i started to feel it out and came up with Casting Me Away - from the deep past. There is an old recording with my school-mate Comrie Smith, somewhere in the ARCHIVES from that time. I recorded it for the ‘Second Song’ album with the Chrome Hearts the next day.

In the early 70s, some time soon after i moved to Broken Arrow Ranch, David Meyers, the great cinematographer, jumped on the back of my old jeepster and we took a ride across Broken Arrow. 20 years or so before Rick Rosas shot the trip that is now ‘Second Song’.

Check this video out! Zeke’s mom, Carrie Snodgress, is riding her horse along with Timer, our dog, who’s riding with me as we cross the beautiful ranch on a new road.
Love to you,
neil

 

100% Analog Source.
Mixed by John Hanlon
Produced by Lou Adler with the Volume Dealers - Neil Young and Niko Bolas

This will be the finest sounding vinyl available anywhere. We took exceptional time and effort to make the sound ‘museum quality’- the best it can be.

Neil

MUSK SPENDS MILLIONS TO SAVE
THE REPUBLICAN SENATE

We need to get a Democratic Senate to kill the corruption, not cave to it.

Elon Musk, by targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, is trying to stop the senate from becoming Democrat. Musk will also spend supporting Republicans in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Your vote counts more than the money of a fascist billionaire. USE YOUR VOTE to save Democracy.

neil young

---

 

LIVING WITH WAR and 100 Voices

(Or maybe 103 but who’s counting)

 

One hundred voices. That is what Neil said to me over the phone.
Not twenty voices overdubbed five times.
Not fifty voices doubled.
One hundred individual voices singing.
All walks of life, all ages, shapes, and kinds. And most important, he wanted every one of them to believe in the message.
And he wanted to record it all in one day, four days from then.
Of course, I didn’t start getting nervous until long after I said yes.

Back story. My best friend of a million years, Niko Bolas, is the courageous and mad soul who said to Neil, “Let’s call Darrell.” I have never thanked Niko enough. That call from Neil changed my entire creative life for the better.

The day before the session, I met Neil and Niko at Capitol recording studios. We went through every song, building parts, chasing ideas. I scribbled pages and pages of notes and recorded little bits and pieces, anything to trigger my memory for the session.

The next morning, Neil, Niko, and 100 of the best singers in the recording world stood in front of us in Studio A. My friend Jenny, a songwriter and photographer, was there too. A couple of the photos here are hers.

Remember who was in that room that day. The best of the best. Among them, without question their voices and their souls cut deep into the lacquer On at least a couple of thousand hit records, And here I was, hoping to hand them something new. A note, a melody, a hook to sing. Any one of them could have done what I was doing, and done it better. But every heart in that room collaborated with ours and poured themselves into Neil’s songs.

I remember working on the track, Lookin’ for a Leader. Everyone was singing full out. The harmonies were there. The tone was there. The pocket they sat in was there. It was awesome. So we went after the attitude of it. Pulling the volume back. Adding accents on certain syllables. Keeping the fire but adding air.

It was crazy. Neil had it filmed. It lives somewhere on his site. That was one of the moments that turned to magic for me. The trust every one of them handed us.

We were hitting our twelfth hour or so of recording, Neil would know for sure. We had finished what we thought was the last song. Then Neil stepped out of the control booth and asked everyone for one last thing. Sing America the Beautiful. A cappella.
All those gifted artists, adding their love to the record. Arms outstretched. Using the last ounce of voice they had to remind us why we were there with Neil. That America belonged to everyone in that room, and to everyone outside it. That moment was unforgettable.
And it made me weep.
Living with War was timeless then. It is timeless now.
Thank you, Thank You, Thank You

Darrell Brown

---

 

Living with War has been our song of the day at NYA for too long. Feeling this, we remixed the whole album, adding a few original things that were left off the initial release twenty years ago. We are featuring the choir more and it is even more magical now with 100 voices singing their hearts out front.

We have done this treatment to the whole album LIVING WITH WAR 2026, with the new features.
Listen to it right here at NYA. Soon I hope we won’t need to anymore.

love Neil

---

 

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western sea.
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Guidance and leadership are what is needed now. Our country is going backwards in the face of an existential threat. Climate has made everything ready to burn. The science is right and good - our fossil fuel use and related activities we continue will be our undoing.

Climate Change is the real issue.
We are the problem.

Our country has no direction forward. No leadership.We are actually going backwards. We have denial and a wish to live in the past, consuming that which will kill us.

We need a REAL leader to stand up in our great beautiful country. This is not about religion.This is about existence. We are going backwards into the past at a great unseen cost. Climate Change moves just slow enough to be missed by the masses. We need leadership in America.

It is time for our leaders to stand up.

Love Earth
Neil

LOOKIN’ FOR A LEADER

 

---

 

September 3, 2026

Good afternoon NYA!

I have big news. Are you sitting down? Would you rather be standing cheek to jowl in a field foggy with weed smoke in Coffee County, Tennessee? With the help of the amazing technology that is NYA now you can feel like you're doing both at once, at least for a couple hours: NYCH at Bonnaroo 2003 is on the tour timeline!

This show has a big reputation, and after listening in preparation for putting it up on the site we can hear why — Zeke used three exclamation marks in his email to me about it: !!!

I bet you’ll dig it at least as much as he did.

love,

nya

This film was shot by the late ‘Rick the Bass Player’ Rosas, a great musician and our wonderful bass man for the Freedom Sessions and the Bluenotes. That was about 1990. Rick was on his way to the ‘Freedom’ ranch sessions and took this film on the road crossing Broken Arrow Ranch to the studio-barn where we were recording. It is a blessing that we have Rick’s footage! Thanks Rick and love to Elizabeth, his lady, who gave us the footage from Rick’s collection recently.

Gary Ward and Rachel Simmer of ‘Lost Planet’ created this lyric video for Second Song twenty seven years later using Rick’s beautiful footage and Gary’s hand printing art. What a wonderful memory of Broken Arrow! This film is full of soulful feelings for me, featuring Broken Arrow Ranch in its happy prime. Those were good days!

Now listen to Second Song and feel the moments…..

---

 

We've been working for the past six months to redesign the software that runs the Times-Contrarian on both the website and the Apple and Android apps and are currently rolling it out. The new platform will make it easier to navigate, read, load, and share. The writing and standards behind it haven't changed, Just the plumbing. Let us know what you think.

NYA

We want to let you know we are aware of an issue you may have experienced on Ticketmaster during the start of the Philadelphia presale this morning. The problem was solved, but before the solution went live some NYA subscribers were only able to access the Club Luck presale tickets (which came bundled with the fees for that club). If this happened to you, please contact NYA customer support here with your Ticketmaster order number, and Ticketmaster will refund the amount to the original order.

The presale for Neil Young Archives annual members started Wednesday, August 19 @ 10:00 AM and ended Thursday, August 20 @ 10:00 PM. Sales to the public open on Friday, August 21 @ 10:00 AM

You can click here and select the "Buy Tickets" button to get tickets once the go on sale to the general public when they go on sale while supplies last.

 

---

 

Will he bankrupt the military like many of his businesses? When was the last time you heard of the US running out of weapon reserves?

What previous president cut off all kinds of critical support only for states that did not vote for him?

Shamelessly building monuments to himself while tearing down parts of American history, compromising National parks, destroying American natural beauty, trying to get on every big screen at world sports events, whether he was invited or not - Who voted for a president like this?

In Iran, where this president started a war without permission from Congress, we have stopped because the campaign has “reached the limits of its effectiveness”, we are in a position much worse than when our president’s war started and our presidentially appointed - inexperienced Fox News host - Secretary of War is a complete disgrace to our country. We are reaping the benefits of complete lack of experience, eclipsed only by our president’s lack thereof. This is the United States today.

Many Americans, by all counts the vast majority, would like to see this president gone. Who does he speak for? Where are they?

Impeach, Resign or?

---

 

By ANDY GREENE

Corduroy Plants, directed by Daryl Hannah, documents Young’s 2025 tour with the Chrome Hearts, and features classics like “Ohio,” “Like a Hurricane,” and “Cortez the Killer”

A couple of months after releasing the live LP As Time Explodes, which chronicles his 2025 summer tour with the Chrome Hearts, Neil Young has quietly released a free companion concert film, Corduroy Plants, on the Neil Young Archives. The hourlong, 11-song film centers around most of the songs from As Time Explodes, but lacks “After the Gold Rush” and “Looking Forward.”

Like many of Young’s recent films, Corduroy Plants was directed by his wife, Daryl Hannah. It’s unclear where exactly the individual performances were filmed, and Hannah occasionally cuts from the stage to show footage drawn from recent news events and moments throughout history.

During the Greendale epic “Be the Rain,” for example, news footage of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House is shown, along with brief clips of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. “Vampire Blues” is paired with footage of devastating oil spills, migrant workers are seen toiling in fields during “Like a Hurricane,” and images of World War II and the Holocaust are seen in “Cortez the Killer,” along with more recent conflicts.

If most artists of Young’s stature had created a concert film and released it for free to the fans, there would have been some sort of promotional campaign along with social media posts. But Young stopped using most social media platforms due to their connections to the Trump administration, rarely grants interviews, and didn’t even send out a press release. It was left for fans to discover for themselves on the Neil Young Archives.

Elsewhere on the NYA, Young updated fans on the status of the fourth volume of his Neil Young Archives box set. The first three volumes covered 1963-72, 1972-76, and 1976-87. This next one will bring the story all the way to the end of the Greendale tour in 2004. “The Volume Dealers have been busy,” Young wrote. “Volume 4 of the Archives is underway, entering the completion phase for all songs we have uncovered over the last two or three years.”

Also on the horizon is Second Song, a new album Young recently recorded with the Chrome Hearts at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studios in Malibu, California. The material is largely brand-new, but there are two or three unearthed songs that Young wrote circa 1963-64 that have never been heard.

Young originally planned on touring Europe this summer with the Chrome Hearts, but he wound up pulling the dates for reasons he never fully articulated. But he reemerged May 22 for a surprise four-song set at David Suzuki’s 90th-birthday concert in Vancouver. He’s also on the bill for Farm Aid, which will take place on Sept. 26 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

NYA Thanks Rolling Stone Magazine!

---

 

The Presale for Farm Aid 2026 Tickets has concluded! Thank you to everyone who participated.

 

---

 

Happy ten year anniversary to this huge and heavily requested show in Leeds with Promise of the Real. A couple songs here are making their first appearance on the NYA tour timeline; I wonder if you can spot them.

love,
nya

---

 

We at NYA greatly appreciate your members and their enthusiasm over the years. it will be a great period for us all over the next years as well. Lots more music coming. NYA Volume 4 is almost completed!

Lots of love and thanks to TW and the people who love it and support it."

ThrashersWheat.org

 

---

 

By boycotting CBS for selling out to the government, TV is now an easy choice to make. No need for CBS. No more CBS NEWS now that we know who is making the coverage decisions

 

THE LAST GREAT MUSIC I WILL EVER WATCH ON CBS

 

---