Joni Mitchell joins Spotify boycott over Joe Rogan podcast

Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has joined a boycott of Spotify in protest against the streaming service funding a podcast by Joe Rogan that features Covid-19 misinformation.

The Grammy-award-winning singer, 78, has 3.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, but wants to take all of her music off the platform because she says "irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives."

Her announcement comes just days after Spotify started taking down songs by musician Neil Young in response to an ultimatum he gave the streaming service over the podcast, saying: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Mitchell, who is best known for her album “Blue,” released 50 years ago, and songs including ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and ‘A Case of You,’ said: "I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue."

“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify," she added in a statement on her website.

Rogan has regularly stirred controversy with his views on the pandemic, government mandates and the use of vaccines to control the spread of the coronavirus.

He signed a £75m deal with Spotify in 2020 and has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode is, by that measurement, far more popular than any news anchor in the country. 

The musclebound UFC commentator says he is not an anti-vaxxer, but he has used his platform to push, and host guests who push, a multitude of baseless ‘theories’ about the pandemic.

These include the assertion that young and healthy people do not need the vaccine, the idea that “mass formation psychosis” is responsible for people believing in the efficacy of vaccines and that hospitals are financially incentivised to falsely diagnose Covid-19 deaths.

In response to the controversy, Spotify said in a statement that it has robust policies in place to remove misleading content from its platform and has removed more than 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Poking fun at the situation, British musician James Blunt tweeted: “If Spotify doesn’t immediately remove Joe Rogan, I will release new music onto the platform.”