Phil Baker
Spotify
When Neil chose to leave Spotify, I don’t think anyone expected to see the impact it would have and how it would raise discussion in a number of new areas. As Neil has reiterated, it was not about censorship, but about his choice to not support a company that was contributing to medical disinformation that was leading to Covid deaths.
One of those areas is the public becoming aware of Spotify’s poor audio quality and the many better alternatives. Qobuz, Apple and Amazon have all benefitted, and they’ve even created special pages to highlight Neil’s music. A second area is Rogan himself, and the scores of racist comments he has made in his episodes coming to light. Spotify has a real existential problem on its hands that’s much more serious than it was just a week ago.
NYA
Neil’s departure from Spotify has brought a huge uptick to our website traffic. There have been days where we’ve seen five to ten times our normal traffic. You may have noticed some pages loading a bit slower, but the impact has been minimal.
Welcome New Members
We’re pleased to welcome the many new members that have signed up and the many existing members that upgraded to a higher tier in support of Neil. We also had some cancellations from those not agreeing with the position Neil has taken. For every cancellation there were about ten new members.
You can read their opinions directly. We’ve published all of the letters we’ve received from members relating to Spotify, each one read and answered by Neil.
Independent Record Store Ads
You may have noticed that we’ve changed our public service ads that appear on page one. Neil has reached out to the independent record stores, offering to provide free display ads. Be sure and let your record store know, so that they can advertise as well.
Android improvements
We’ve released an update for Android users that fix a number of persistent bugs. Supporting Android has been much more difficult than iOS because of the many different phones and versions of Android software. If any of our Android users continue to have difficulties, please let us know.
Greedy Hand Store
We urge you to check out the new merchandise at the Greedy Hand Store. It’s the only store with official Neil Young merchandise, designed and approved by Neil, Daryl and our team at Warner.