Neil Young Thanks Catalog Co-Owners for Support During Spotify Dispute

Neil Young expressed his gratitude to Hipgnosis, the firm that partially owns his music catalog, for their support in pulling his music from Spotify.

As previously reported, Young's music is being pulled from the streaming service at his own request due to the Spotify-exclusive podcast The Joe Rogan Experience and its track record of spreading COVID misinformation.

Young wrote, in part, via his official website, "I want to thank my partners for standing with me. My deal with Merck Mercuriadis and HIPGNOSIS began on January 1, 2021. The company HIPGNOSIS now has part of my publishing and I am very happy with their support. I was to personally thank Merck and HIPGNOSIS for standing with me. Losing 60% of worldwide streaming income by leaving SPOTIFY is a very big deal, a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and our beliefs. Misinformation about COVID is over the line.

Meanwhile, Spotify is taking the situation in stride with a spokesperson saying in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, "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 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon."