Joe Rogan Takes a Victory Lap After Neil Young Announces He's Returning to Spotify

Frazer Harrison. Getty Images.

As a man with few if any principles, I can admire someone who does have them. Particularly when they take a principled stand that costs them dearly. Even if I think the hill they're choosing to die on is a foolish one, there's just something to be said about the integrity it takes to make sacrifices in order fight for what you believe it. 

So I appreciated the move by Neil Young to pull his music off of Spotify to protest the Covid "disinformation" elsewhere on the platform:

Even though we later found out he didn't actually own the rights to the catalog and it really wasn't hurting him financially, willingly taking that hit to his public profile was a bold move. One worthy of our respect.

And now I guess we have to respect that Young's principles have an expiration date. And the "Sell By" day was this week:

CNBC - Neil Young on Wednesday said his music will return to Spotify, just more than two years after he and other artists removed their catalogues from the music streaming platform amid a vaccine disinformation dispute.

Spotify has not confirmed the news. CNBC has contacted the company for comment.

The incident that led to his departure centered on Spotify’s multimillion-dollar deal with Joe Rogan, whose eponymous podcast was accused by Young of spreading “fake information” about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. A group of 270 U.S. doctors and scientists also called on Spotify to “take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Young said his decision to return was in light of Apple and Amazon “serving the same disinformation podcast features” he opposed at Spotify.

While we're talking about respect, how can you not have it for logic Young is applying here? He strenuously objected to the episode where Rogan talked to the inventor of the mRNA vaccine:

… who questioned its efficacy for treating Covid. And the guy who writes and sings songs for a living felt so strongly that this medical pioneer shouldn't be talking about his own area of expertise that he was willing to lay down a substantial part of his career for it. But since now everyone's saying what the doctor said two years ago, we're good. I mean, it's still "disinformation." But that toothpaste isn't going back into the tube, so why bother? 

Needless to say, this went over big with Spotify's biggest star and main source of revenue:

I don't know about that last part saying Young has reversed course. Which in a way, would actually be worse. It's one thing to do a 180 on your ethics. But doing a full 360 because you got mocked online for the 180 is simply ridiculous. 

Either way, this continues to be what it was destined to be from the beginning: Asymmetrical warfare. A blatant example of someone not understanding the power dynamic. (Or medical science; but that's a whole other conversation.) Before you storm out the place where you work to voice your displeasure, you have to understand where you are in the pecking order. Young was trying to punch above his weight class and predictably ended up being the one getting KO'ed. 

Let this be a lesson to everyone demanding things of the people that pay them. Think for a minute about who the earners in the company are. And never forget that everyone else is expendable. Even the principled, ethical ones.