Just one day after Neil Young’s music was pulled from Spotify, the streaming platform’s No. 1 competitor, Apple Music, is showing the rock legend some love.
On Thursday (Jan. 27), Apple Music highlighted Young’s catalog under the header “We Love Neil,” displayed prominently within the service’s “Browse” section. The header is a clear dig at Spotify, which has become the subject of scorn after purging Young’s catalog from the platform Wednesday at the rocker’s request, due to COVID-19 vaccine information spread by Spotify’s Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
On Thursday, the hashtag #cancelSpotify and “Apple Music” were both trending topics on Twitter.
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The Young imbroglio comes as Spotify’s dominance over the global streaming market — while still considerable — appears to be waning. At the end of June 2021, there were 523.9 million global streaming subscribers, according to a report from MIDiA Research published Jan. 18. Of that, Spotify’s share was was 31% — or over 162 million — down from 33% in Q2 2020 and 34% in Q2 2019. Spotify reported 172 million premium subscribers in its Q3 2021 earnings report.
Apple Music is a distant second among streaming services, According to the MIDiA report, with a 15% global subscriber share — putting it at more than 78 million subscribers. Apple hasn’t officially reported Apple Music subscriber numbers since June 2019, when it claimed 60 million subscribers.
Amazon Music and Tencent Music’s market share ties them for third place at a 13% share each, while YouTube Music is the fastest-growing service overall with an 8% subscriber market share. The platform grew by more than 50% in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021, exerting a particular pull with Gen Z and young millennials.
While Spotify added more total subscribers in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021 than any other streaming service – meaning it’s in no danger of losing the lead anytime soon – MIDiA managing director and lead music analyst Mark Mulligan notes that “the erosion of” Spotify’s share is nonetheless “steady and persistent.”
In addition to Apple Music, SiriusXM also seemingly sided with Young on Thursday after the satellite radio broadcaster announced it would be bringing back its limited-run Neil Young Radio show – which features exclusive stories and music from Young’s career – for a seven-day run starting today.
Spotify removed Young’s catalog from the platform on Wednesday, two days after the singer-songwriter demanded that his music be pulled from the platform via an open letter addressed to his manager and the chairman and COO of his label, Warner Records. Of Rogan’s podcast, Young wrote, “With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
As Young noted, Rogan has a history of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines on his hugely-popular podcast, which struck a $100 million exclusive licensing deal with Spotify in 2020. In addition to hosting vaccine skeptics including immunologist Dr. Robert Malone, the host has discouraged young people from receiving the vaccine, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy” and promoted the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, contrary to FDA warnings against using the drug to treat the virus.
In a statement sent to Billboard after agreeing to remove Young’s catalog, a Spotify representative wrote, “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
Young followed with his own celebratory notes on Thursday, thanking his label and publisher, Hipgnosis — which bought Young’s song catalog last year for $150 million — saying that Spotify accounted for 60% of his streaming revenue. “Leaving Spotify is a very big deal, a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and our beliefs,” he wrote.
