Each one stores in his brain the soundtrack of his life. Music and songs describe the world, tell and sing injustices, fall in love, incite or evoke; but, beyond poetry, there are the market and the industry, which roar and sometimes devour. While music doesn’t change the world, it does make it a more enjoyable place.
I read a week ago that if a person listens to the same song on Spotify every day from fifteen to ninety-six years old, the performer and the authors will receive approximately one hundred dollars; instead, the platform will charge that user about eleven thousand five hundred dollars. Despite this disparity, for his recognition, existence and promotion the artist must give in to the dominance and demands of that channel.
Spotify is transforming itself from just music to spoken content and to do so in 2020 it paid about a hundred million dollars for the exclusive rights to the podcast from The Joe Rogan Experience, that has eleven million reproductions per episode and that, health specialists consider, has helped to misinform about the pandemic.
Given the spread of disinformation podcast Two weeks ago, seventy-six-year-old Canadian rocker and activist Neil Young told the brand: either Rogan’s lies or my music, take your pick! Spotify did not respond and Young, along with other key artists such as Joni Mitchel, left the platform. A question of ethics, not of strategy. not only the millenial They hold brands accountable. Years ago Pete Townshend of the rock group The Who wrote: “If you cry out for truth instead of help, if you commit yourself with a courage you are not sure you possess, if you stand up to point out something that is wrong, but does not ask for blood to redeem it, then it is rock and roll”.
Spotify was hit hard and lost about two billion dollars on the stock market, then Rogan and the brand apologized and the shares stopped falling. We were warned that brands and corporations would replace governments, perhaps that is why today Young claims and demands consistency from one of them. Although the platform has removed more than a hundred episodes of Rogan, none of them have anything to do with covid.
In the face of controversy, Spotify cannot forget that when a channel serves as a loudspeaker and reproduces someone’s message, it becomes an accomplice and, even if it tries, it cannot avoid its own responsibility.
I am one of those who believes that it is necessary to prioritize health and life above all else, even though artists sacrifice themselves to do so. Fortunately, the songs of Young and the others have a life of their own beyond the platform. Artists demand conviction, coherence, commitment to information, veracity and non-polarization from the brand.
Young already said it in his song “Rust Never Sleeps”: “it is better to burn than to fade slowly”
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