Now that The Atlantic — a once- or twice- or thrice-upon-a-time great magazine — toes a statist line relentlessly, it is most valuable for its hints at the exact opposite of the truth.
While Spencer Kornhaber’s article, “Spotify Isn’t Really About the Music Anymore,” may be mostly correct regarding the facts presented in Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s boycotts of Spotify — pulling their music off the Internet platform — the whole angle is off.
Spotify, we learn, rarely turns a profit in its long tail music biz. By making an exclusive podcasting contract with The Joe Rogan Experience, the company seeks to entice users to pay up to listen to talk-show audio, and thereby become more profitable.
But is the service not really “about the music anymore”?
Adding an allied genre does not negate the provision of entertainment to the core audience.
The article’s tagline gets it exactly backwards: “In choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the company has made its new priorities clear to listeners.” Well, no. It was Neil Young (and then Joni Mitchell) who went the narrow, exclusionary route. Spotify had made a long-term contract with Rogan in a bid to attract listeners of podcasts and other spoken-word content. Young and Mitchell didn’t have the same kind of relationship with Spotify, so their attempt to cancel Rogan was doomed.
Unless they get other artists to do the same. Which could sink the company.
Then we would see the culture war ramp up another notch, with the artistic community segregating itself against those of differing (non-leftist*/non-statist/pro-freedom) opinions.
It’s something rich old rock-n-roller cranks can do.
But a dangerous strategy for younger artists.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Even leftists with differing opinions shall be shunned; back in 2020, Joe Rogan endorsed socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president.
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