Crosby, Stills & Nash have returned to Spotify, five months after the supergroup left the platform in protest of the spread of COVID misinformation by Joe Rogan. According to Billboard, the group will donate the benefits of the transmission to COVID-19 charities for “at least a month.”
The return of musicians to Spotify marks a quiet and relatively unglamorous end to their protest, which has largely had the effect of increasing the number of Rogan subscribers, if the podcaster is to be believed. Crosby, Stills & Nash originally announced in February that they would withdraw their music in solidarity with fellow bandmate Neil Young, who started a series of artist protests on Spotify when he withdrew his music and released a open letter criticizing the company for its support of Rogan.
“I do this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines, potentially killing those who believe the misinformation they are spreading,” Young wrote in a blog post deleted since then.
Young, however, has not returned to Spotify, and this is causing some discomfort with the return of Crosby, Stills & Nash. While the trio’s songs are back on Spotify, their albums under the bigger banner of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young include a number of omissions: songs credited to Young can’t yet be streamed, just as than a couple of songs written by Joni Mitchell, who also protests the platform.
Here is his 1970 album Déjà Vu on Spotify right now:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s album Déjà Vu on Spotify.
Only six of the album’s 10 songs are available to play because Young and Mitchell’s music is not available.
Crosby, Stills & Nash said in February that they would not return their music to Spotify “until real action is taken to show that concern for humanity must be balanced with trade.” But the group does not appear to have issued an updated statement to say whether Spotify has made changes to meet its concerns.
Spotify has made some small changes since the protests began. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek promised to spend $ 100 million on content from marginalized groups; the company began tagging podcasts that talked about COVID-19; and Spotify released its content rules for the first time, after The Verge obtained details of its strict medical misinformation policy.
The company has also controlled the damage with at least a couple of high-profile content creators. After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle criticized the company for misinforming COVID-19, Spotify worked with the couple’s producer to smooth things out and move forward with developing a show with Markle.