Who has got more to lose?

For a minute there, I thought Spotify wasn’t going to respond to Neil. The news cycle is so fast that if you let it go it oftentimes goes forever, when you respond you’re adding gasoline to the fire. Furthermore, Mr. Young removed the post from his website stating his intention. A betting man would say it was a blip on the radar screen, that by removing the post Neil had plausible deniability. But it wouldn’t do much for his credibility, just like Adele canceling her Vegas shows when only one person had Covid and she hadn’t even gone to see the sets constructed.

Lying, it’s the American way.

Also, a few years back, Mr. Young canceled a Forum show in solidarity with the employees, but sales for that show were anemic, was it a convenient excuse?

That’s the music business. Known neither for its honesty or transparency. Now more than ever. We’ve got a zillion outlets which disseminate the news, then again, is anybody interested?

It seems people are interested now that Neil’s music is going, going, gone from Spotify. After all, Spotify, rightly or wrongly, has an image problem to begin with.

And financial issues too. Music doesn’t scale. So by going into podcasting, other content distribution, Spotify gets a chance to rejigger its financials, hopefully positively. And if you’re gonna go, go big, which is why they made a deal with Joe Rogan to begin with. He’s got the number one podcast, get him exclusively, it’ll jump-start your platform.

No one thought beyond that. Believe me, nearly every decision today is data driven, it’s not like Spotify assigned an employee to listen to every Rogan podcast and get back to them with a report. And Spotify had made it clear it didn’t represent the views of the artists on its site, so why would podcasts be any different?

Well, first and foremost because Rogan’s podcast was exclusive. With a big upfront payment. And Spotify doesn’t do this for any of its musical acts. Music distribution is essentially equal on all platforms, that battle was settled half a decade ago, that there would be no exclusives. Those would be to the detriment of the label, the other platforms might not play nice when exclusivity ended and customers on other platforms would be pissed and the disadvantages outweighed the advantages.

Then again, Spotify did not launch its service aligned with one big act, it’s not like Zeppelin or the Beatles or a modern act went on a roadshow, was featured in all the ads, no, Spotify was a distribution platform, ultimately agnostic.

But not in podcasts.

So no one expected Neil Young to go through with this. At best there would be endless meetings that would come to a conclusion after Covid was gone. The issue would be put on the back burner.

But Neil doubled-down.

Doesn’t hurt Neil, he makes more money from one show than he does in a year of Spotify streams. And his fans are diehards, not casual, they approve of everything he does, and it’s not like Spotify is the only place you can hear his music.

But…

I’m already getting e-mail from people thinking about switching services. They’re pissed that Spotify still does not have HD/lossless, and they support the little guy. This was the essence of the power of the musician when Neil Young broke through. It was us versus them. We stood up for what was right and they squirmed. They were the establishment, we were the future. And rock stars made so much money they could afford to make a stand, they made more than the corporate CEOs. But that’s no longer true. Business is in charge once again. And the mores have changed, now the goal is to become a business! “Shark Tank,” apps, people are more desirous of starting a business than a band, both have long odds but you’ve got more control in business.

Spotify is a business. Daniel Ek did a phenomenal job creating it. He delivered what the public and music industry wanted before they knew they wanted it. If you’d told Daniel Ek to create a number one act in the same amount of time, there’s a very good chance he’d have come up empty. You see business has rules, facts. Art is inherently creative and vague, with no rules and no agreement on what is worthwhile and what will hit, it’s unpredictable. Which is why it’s such a hard road.

So now it’s the little guy versus the big guy. Rogan isn’t even a factor, what he is saying, the issue boils down to is Spotify artist-friendly or money-friendly? What are the company’s priorities?

And no other classic rock act has followed in Neil Young’s footsteps. But if you look at the numbers, like Neil, what have they got to lose? They make much more money on the road. And if you pull your tunes they’re screwed. Hell, Spotify didn’t launch for years in America because it couldn’t get every major music group to agree to license their music.

And you know that Spotify would gladly take you back if you left and wanted to return. It’s not like they’re banning Neil Young forever.

So what’s the advantage of having Joe Rogan? They already built their podcast business, Wall Street is impressed. Rogan can go at very little cost. They might have to pay the entire $100 million to get rid of him, but  maybe this was a lousy business model, ownership of content.

That’s right, Spotify doesn’t own all that music, it just licenses it,.

Since Apple was asleep at the wheel, Spotify is now the leading, bleeding edge of podcasting, Rogan’s work is essentially done. But Rogan isn’t the only podcast they own…

But movie studios and record labels have been distributing content and taking no responsibility for years. Why should it be different for Spotify?

Covid. Right versus left. Life or death.

The coming civil war won’t only be fought hand to hand in combat on the street, music is always the bleeding edge, and now Spotify is at the bleeding edge of the civil war. It was trying to be neutral, but now Neil Young is asking which side the company is on. Like that old aphorism, you’re either with me or against me, and it turns out Spotify is not only against Neil Young, but the distribution of accurate information. I mean Facebook is legendary as a haven of misinformation. But there’s not a Joe Rogan of Facebook or Instagram, not a single individual who can be identified and expunged. Then again, the social networks have canceled the posting privileges of individuals, most notably Trump. Why should Spotify get a pass here?

And misinformation/disinformation is a big thing here. Did you read that Russia is already fighting Ukraine with misinformation? Absolutely. Read this and weep:

“Russia Steps Up Propaganda War Amid Tensions With Ukraine

The disinformation campaign includes claims that NATO and Ukrainian forces are preparing to attack Russian speakers in Ukraine.”: https://nyti.ms/348ZryD

Misinformation/disinformation is the scourge of society, it’s bringing down democracy around the world. And vaccines have now become a litmus test, which side are you on?

No one’s got a problem with Joe Rogan bringing the issues to the fore. Then again, he’s got a long history of hosting quacks, and they should not be given bandwidth. I mean do you want Alex Jones giving editorials on the TV news every night? Of course not.

But that’s not what Joe Rogan is doing. He’s taking sides with the quacks. And these quacks have led to the breakdown of society. Measles was gone, now it’s back because of anti-vaxxers. But now it’s worse.

Joe Rogan could try and be responsible, state the truth whenever one of these bozos speaks falsehoods. But that’s not what he does, like Spotify he’s hands off, saying it’s not his responsibility, when in truth he agrees with them when it comes to the vaccine. Just like Spotify is endorsing anti-vaxxers by standing up for Joe instead of Neil. You’ve got to take responsibility.

We might as well call him Dr. Rogan. Aaron Rodgers called Joe when he got Covid. And Joe himself got Covid. And the truth is old people are more susceptible to Covid than youngsters, but people across the age spectrum, even completely healthy, die from Covid.

And vaccines have been cast as a personal choice. Do you get to go a hundred miles an hour on the freeway just because you’ve got a history of safe driving and haven’t killed anyone yet? And as good a driver as you might be, that doesn’t mean someone else won’t be a doofus, cut in front of you and then cause an accident. You see we live in a society, all together, and unless we look out for each other, we’re screwed.

And we’re screwed now. Everybody could be vaxxed, Covid would be less of an issue, but no, you’re stepping on my FREEDOM!

How was it cast this way?

Meanwhile, the guy who came up with these monikers, like the “Death Tax,” Frank Luntz, is rabidly pro-vaccine, he’s been on a mission. But it’s got no traction, because he, unlike Neil Young, does not have a voice that can reach everybody.

This is where we are in 2022. Do we let the lunatics take over the asylum? Just because a bunch of uninformed people say something is true does that make it so?

This is going to go further. Spotify is just the first, but corporations are going to have to declare themselves, which side are they on?

The leading edge here is Patagonia, which refuses to make vests for corporate retreats anymore, they don’t like their brand aligned with the viewpoints and actions of those companies. Patagonia is leaving money on the table, but the end result has been a further burnishing of the brand, and even more revenue!

That’s what taking a stand does. And you want to get out in front of the story before you get bitten in the ass. Believe me, Spotify wouldn’t make that deal with Joe Rogan today, not knowing what they know now.

But they did, and here we are.

Financially, short term, letting Neil Young go is a no-brainer. But long term? Spotify already gets heat from know-nothings about payments for streaming. It’s akin to Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant is a front for the acts and the labels and Spotify is a front for the labels, and the purveyors don’t want the truth known. And no matter how many times I write the truth about Ticketmaster or streaming payouts people don’t believe it. The artist can never be wrong, the artist is inviolate, the corporation must be at fault!

This is bigger than Joe Rogan. Spotify needs a policy, like Twitter. What is allowed and what is not. And it’s got to be damn clear.

And Spotify needs to do what is right as opposed to putting dollars first. Because if you do what is right at the beginning, you don’t have to lie and play catch-up when the truth finally outs, which it always does. You want to be ahead of the audience, which is how Spotify made it to begin with, people didn’t know they wanted streaming, and now not only is it the most prominent method of music distribution, more revenue is coming in!

People e-mail and tweet me misinformation all day long. Are we just gonna let this stand, let these people be misinformed and delusional? And where are they getting this info, FROM PEOPLE LIKE JOE ROGAN! Joe is so successful that he’s got a high profile, but now he’s got a target on his back, with the rewards also come the penalties.

But I don’t expect further action.

Unless a few more acts pull their music from Spotify, the odds of which are low.

One person can make a difference. You think it’s about a team, but usually it’s just one person, just one leader. So far it’s Neil Young. Is he imperfect? Of course! But so is everybody else. He’s all-in, he’s absorbing the loss, he’s a beacon for truth in a world where everybody puts money first.

And I ask you, which side do you want to be on? One in which money trumps everything? That’s how we got here, with mindless nitwits making bank online, with me-too “artists.” You either take a stand for truth, justice and the American Way or…

You’re the enemy.

You can’t get traction. And everybody who says they’re a worldwide star known by everyone is lying.

Music used to be a controlled marketplace. The big hurdle was distribution. Retail paid incredibly slowly, and they tended to only pay those with a continuing conveyor belt of product. So if you were an indie, even if you could get your record into a retail store and it sold, the odds of getting paid were low, and if you had a hit it would put you out of business. You’d be manufacturing and shipping new product to fulfill orders and then you wouldn’t get paid. Music was a sleazy business, a street business, contracts could be irrelevant. It all came down to money, force and relationships.

Relationships are everything. But when the music industry was built you had to actually see and know the people you were dealing with. Ergo conventions. You did business on the phone. Today’s younger generation does business via e-mail, iMessage…oftentimes they have never even met the people on the other side, sometimes they’ve never even talked to them! Talk to an experienced agent, they’re stunned how quiet it is in the office, everybody’s just on their computer.

And relationships were king at radio. Especially after the crackdown on payola a few decades back. Stations didn’t want to risk dealing with indies. Furthermore, radio knew major labels had the resources to support a hit if it took off.

And then MTV made hits worldwide, bigger than ever before and then…

The internet came along and blew up the whole thing, and it’s never been the same since.

We live in a pull culture. Everything is on demand. You take what you want when you want it. In addition, if someone is pushing something on you you’re turned off. You hate advertising, you do your best to avoid it. The only people you trust are your friends, even Pitchfork was sold to Condé Nast. As for online influencers? They whored themselves out for the bucks years ago, they might make entertaining content, but you can’t trust a word they say.

Now the classic rock acts made their bones in the old era, which is why they can still do such good business, why their tunes are still in demand. But if you made it after let’s say 2005, with MTV and VH1 dead, it’s a very different world. The internet turned a tight knit society into a Tower of Babel. You used to be proud you were an outsider. Now if you’re an outsider, you might as well be Pluto, which was demoted from being a planet, so far out there and so small that we don’t even care about it, never mind think about it. Rebelling in culture, being dictatorial about choices, approving what should be listened to, is completely passé. 

But there is still a hit business run by old men to appeal to young kids. Young kids haven’t seen the trick, it’s new to them. They’re susceptible to the hype. They’re building their identity. They want to own something, which is why you can’t take a kid to any kind of store, they want EVERYTHING!

As for the oldsters… They know there’s always a hit from the past that’s better than the ones in the present. Forget that the Doors and Led Zeppelin are forever, the most memorable track of the past decade was “Blurred Lines,” and I won’t get into the copyright issue whatsoever, but in truth it was based on a Marvin Gaye song that wasn’t even one of his big hits!

And now the common belief is that anybody can make music. You can buy your beats online and then rap over them. Very democratic, not very interesting. It’s like YouTube, we have endless bandwidth but very little that deserves attention, that blows up, that gets traction.

Not that the major labels don’t have some power, but they blow up what independent artists have made headway with. Think about that, the major labels don’t sign inexperienced artists, don’t develop them and only work with that which the audience has already approved of. If it’s new and different, the type of stuff the labels used to sign and stay with until it broke through, the majors want nothing to do with it. It’s too expensive and the odds are long.

This happened first in the movie business. Major studios started making and releasing fewer pictures. The marketing costs were just too high. And small pictures got smaller, they required marketing in excess of production costs and they almost never blew up and returned beaucoup bucks, so the studios got out of that business, which is now supported by the streaming services. Still, movies are more expensive to create than music and there are a limited number of slots for them. There’s an unlimited number of slots for music!

As for exhibition… Every streaming outlet promotes a top list, but most of their audience doesn’t care about it. It’s not the Top Forty of the sixties, varied, it’s all singular. And if you don’t like that kind of music you don’t listen.

And hit country music is more formulaic than pop stuff, with a lot less interesting lyrics. So, the mainstream is a backwater.

And the rest of the stuff?

There’s a great station on Sirius, XMU. It’s kind of like the college radio of yore, back before colleges sold off their stations, but you hear a great track and you wonder…AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT THIS?

This is a huge problem in music. We don’t want to be out there alone, we want context, we want to be a member of the club, and if there is no club, we’re probably going to go someplace where there is one. We want to belong. It’s human nature. Singularity is death. It’s the same way in politics, you’re on one side or the other. And if you’re afraid of being judged, you just say you’re an independent, even though you usually vote one way or the other, usually Republican. That’s another thing, we can’t take the temperature of the public. Trust NO research, none at all. The people who will talk to pollsters, fill out online forms, are a self-selecting group. Leaving out most people with a life who don’t want to blow time working for free. Which is why election forecasting is no longer trustworthy. But if they can’t get it right on elections, with all that money and “expertise,” what are the odds they can get it right on any other subject? Essentially nil. Which is why Steve Jobs never did research, he trusted his gut, because when something resonates with your gut, there’s a good chance it will resonate with someone else’s. And to make it in today’s overstuffed world something must be great and resonate.

Which is almost nothing in the music world.

Adele? “30” is not in the league of yesteryear’s pop music, not even close. Which is why Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous” was the biggest album (in this case double album) of last year. Just listen to it! The songs are catchy, they’ve got changes, you can sing along. This is what people are looking for, Wallen did not blow up because of those on the right supporting him after he was canceled, it’s just the music. Aaron Lewis’s right wing b.s. song got no traction, and neither did those “Let’s Go Brandon” songs, novelties that got some ink and then promptly fell off the iTunes chart, a backwater unto itself. If someone is quoting iTunes numbers, forget them.

So how can the new music problem be solved?

NOT EASILY!

It demands great music and commitment, and we’ve got little of both.

Let’s start with the second issue. No one today takes the long view, no one can delay gratification. Stay off social media and practice your instrument alone? FORGET IT!

Take years to support a new and different artist before rewards are reaped? The label isn’t interested in that, it’s got to make its quarterly numbers.

In other words, there’s no investment in the future, and when this happens an industry withers. Like the new music industry.

A new and different hit sound? That used to happen every three or four years, maybe five. We haven’t had a new sound in TWENTY YEARS!

And it’s harder than ever to reach people and even if people bite it takes forever to spread the word, possibly years, because there’s so much in the channel, so many other choices and diversions. And people believe that music is a juvenile backwater that deserves little attention, they’d rather watch streaming television, which they can talk about. When was the last time we had a “Squid Game” in the music business…GNARLS BARKLEY? Most people are not interested in the Weeknd and they’re not listening to Adele either, if they’re listening at all it’s to the oldies, which they already know and are better.

Meanwhile, on TV singing shows, which stopped minting stars eons ago, if they did at all, songs are king, But some of today’s hits don’t even have a chorus, they’re sans melody, you can’t sing them whatsoever!

And who was the mastermind of the last big breakthrough? Lou Pearlman, who wasn’t even in the music business. A hustler crook just like the old record men. He saw a hole in the business and poured umpteen dollars into making his acts successful. And they became so, selling more CDs in their initial week than any acts before them. Just ask Clive Calder, who became a billionaire based on Pearlman’s hits and has never ventured into the music business again, who took his money and went home! Lucian Grainge? He’s not in the league of Clive Calder, who with his compatriots Ralph Simon and Mutt Lange started off making soundalike records in South Africa and then moved to the U.K. and conquered the business. You see those three knew the fundamentals, they saw the complete landscape, Mutt could make hits with AC/DC as well as Shania Twain and Michael Bolton. Who has that experience today?

Oh, that’s right, Max Martin, who Pearlman gave a chance with his bands and still rules two decades later. But Max learned in school, and not only do we not have these specialized schools in America, we’ve eradicated arts programs from the rest of them. And where they support the arts, like Canada…those are the countries that generate the hits.

So it always comes down to songs. Verses, choruses and bridges. Melody. Riffs. You start with the basics and grow from there. But we’re so far from the garden all the flowers have died.

You can’t turn the ship of new music around in a day. It will take YEARS!

First we have to show acts we’re interested in their experiments, then we have to market them, which is a slow, difficult process.

But what we’re really looking for is that one great act. One great act can change everything. Something new and different that changes the whole scene. The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, outsiders so great the audience flocks to them. We’re absent these artists today, and until we have them new music is gonna be in trouble, because it’s got to compete with the greats of the past, which used to fade away but now they’re just a click away on the streaming service.

As for streaming outlets? They hype what the majors will commit to, they’re the new radio stations. But it’s a circle jerk of small-minded, small market stuff, which most people don’t care about, it’s hard to grow a business on that

And it used to be music was a license to get rich. Not anymore, not on a big time level, which is why all the innovators, the square pegs in round holes, go elsewhere. And all VC money left music after the labels held them back by not licensing their music. You want innovation? Go somewhere else.

I mean the industry could band together, have a record of the week, that everybody would be interested in checking out. But the industry doesn’t want this, because the track would have to be a one listen smash and most of what they sell isn’t.

But we’ve still got the classics, just like we’ve got Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. The fact that the public wants these old classic acts is a GOOD THING! We’ve just had trouble making new classics.

“Nightclub Comedian” trailer: https://bit.ly/3s0cgDU

This is rarely laugh out loud funny but I recommend you watch it. It’s not much of a commitment, not even half an hour. But it’s loaded with truth.

You might have read about the comments re Aaron Rodgers. And they’re pretty good, but I’m not sure I like Ansari’s perspective that we just all have to get along. I think this is to appease those who might be on the other side of the political spectrum, he doesn’t want to alienate them, lose another part of his audience after the dating fiasco.

I don’t want to rehash the details, but my ultimate question is whether it really hurt Ansari’s career. Turns out most people angry about general .offenses are not hard core fans anyway, and in truth you have to do something really offensive to turn off your hard core fans, hell, even Bill Cosby is on the road. Not that their offenses are similar, one can question if Ansari even committed an offense, but that’s in the rearview mirror. And what we’ve got today is a comedian who lives in London coming back to New York to lay down some truth at the Comedy Cellar.

It takes a lot of strength to live in the spotlight. Especially when you’re accused of bad behavior. Which is one of the reasons Ansari lives so far away. But he’s definitely an American, unlike Madonna he doesn’t have an English accent, and he’s performing…

Just like any other comedian in a nightclub.

Being at the club is different. Comedy clubs are usually small, the waitstaff is hustling drinks, which may be part of a minimum, there’s constant background noise but everybody there is there because they want to. They want to laugh. They’re on the side of the comedian until he or she turns them off. You get the benefit of the doubt, but not for long.

And Ansari’s performance is a surprise. That’s one of the reasons you go to the elite metropolitan comedy clubs, you don’t know who will drop in. Hell, we all now know that to make it most comedians work multiple clubs a night, so the odds are somewhat high, just like if you go to a gig in L.A. of an act with a special guest on the record, there’s a good chance the guest will take the stage.

So, the audience is pumped.

But Ansari starts off slow. Just like you would in a club.

And he works his way to Rodgers and Covid and makes the point that this guy is a FOOTBALL PLAYER, not someone held up as an intellectual in either the high school or college hierarchy. The media makes them gods, but we knew them when. And at this point how much punishment has Aaron Rodgers’s body taken, how many hits to the head?

But the reason you really want to watch this special on Netflix is because Ansari opines on musicians, who are so busy with their side hustles that music is a secondary enterprise, if they’re practicing it at all. How it’s all about the money in America. Everybody has got a side business, and this side hustle oftentimes turns into the main hustle.

And Ansari is one of us. A bit nerdy. Not a fashion icon. He’s speaking from our perspective, you know, the educated not famous cadre.

Why is it that only cartoons and comedians can speak the truth?

Musicians used to be famous for this, before they became fearful it would hurt their brand. You don’t want to turn off any potential customer, because if you do it will be harder to sell stuff, harder to make a deal with the Fortune 500.

And today’s comedians tend not to go to the heart of the matter. They find their niche and go deeper into it. Whereas here Ansari is observing the world just like we would. I mean what exactly is going on? It’s incomprehensible. And Ansari even references the quick news cycle. And the fact that we’re addicted to irrelevant news online. This is something I realize since I’ve subscribed to Apple News+. Forget the drivel at the end of webpages, that’s just a way to make some bread from the brain dead. But I’m paying for Apple News+, and essentially every story has a clickbait headline. To the point where you stop clicking at all. But if you don’t click are you out of the loop?

The secondary has become primary. We all know it, but Ansari uses his platform to say it.

It had an impact on me.

I only went to law school because my father would pay for it and I had the world’s worst case of mononucleosis and I had to get out of Utah. But despite not caring a whit about the law, not ever wanting to practice law, I did learn a few things there.

Then again, this was just after Watergate, which permanently damaged the image of attorneys. Then again, this was back when you wanted your kid to be either a doctor or a lawyer, a professional, to ensure they existed above the hoi polloi, that you didn’t have to worry about them, that they could survive.

Ain’t that a laugh.

I know this doctor my age who was making 250k back in the eighties, he was richer than anybody I knew. Today? HE MAKES THE SAME 250k!

I’m not saying doctors are poor, but the truth is the model has changed, very few practice independently, they’ve sold their souls to the hospital chains, and although a few, like surgeons, make beaucoup bucks, most don’t. As for lawyers… The biggest story in the business is how the schools have snookered the students into borrowing a ton of money to attend when in truth jobs paying enough to retire that debt are very few in number. Graduate in the top 10% of your class, maybe top 15%, and you’re covered. Less than that odds are you won’t be able to get a legal job whatsoever.

But if you go into banking… You’ll work around the clock but you’ll be handsomely compensated. And techies can win the financial lottery. As for attorneys? It’s illegal to sell your practice in California, your firm has no asset value, so your odds of getting rich? You’d better be a personal injury lawyer or make good investments or get really lucky.

Now it could be worse. You could have worked for a record label. Read about that Elektra A&R guy who just died, destitute? That’s not an uncommon story. The streets are littered with not only broke former A&R guys, but dead ones. I mean a promo guy is a salesman, he can sell anything, and many of them now do, real estate and… But it takes no qualifications to get an A&R job and having done it it delivers no skills someone outside the industry is going to pay you good dough for…

But you still think you want to be in the music industry.

Not that many know any of the above, they’re just riding on emotions, forget that they’ve got no power of analysis, they’re clueless when it comes to the law, although if you just read the business sections of either the WSJ or the NYT it’s amazing what you’ll learn. As a matter of fact, I’m all about self-education. As for law school…I think I learned more in the bar review course than I ever did in class. If you can read and analyze, you don’t need a teacher.

And all this is to say that if Spotify cancels Joe Rogan’s contract IT IS NOT CENSORSHIP!

Spotify is a private company, it can do what it wants. As can the newspaper and the social media outlets and…

Now it’s something different if the place, virtual or real, is the only game in town. There have been rulings saying that you must allow protests at shopping centers, back when they were the center of human discourse, but… Today shopping centers have died, they’re empty shells, or have been turned into apartments or offices, and we live in a virtual world, where there are a zillion locations just a click away.

Meaning if one company, i.e. Spotify, decides not to exhibit something, this does not deny the speaker the right to exhibit it elsewhere. It’s kind of like restaurants, no shirt, no shoes, no service. You don’t have an inherent right to eat at somebody’s restaurant, and you don’t have an inherent right to be on Spotify. Spotify gets to decide what it wants to feature. And if it says no, it is not censorship, it’s a BUSINESS DECISION! There’s not a single law on the books that prevents them from doing this. As a matter of fact, just the opposite is true, there’s a ton of examples stating just this point!

Not that the average person knows all this.

Hell, I thought my legal education was a waste until Napster came along. It was copyright infringement, any lawyer could see that. And then there was a legal case deciding that. But we’d hear wankers talk about the egregious behavior of labels, overcharging for one good track on a CD…THAT WAS THEIR RIGHT! The fact that practically, as the wheels of the future turned that was no longer a good business model…has nothing to do with the law.

Just like if you lose at trial you don’t get the right to appeal and get your case heard all over again. You can appeal ERRORS, but if there are none, the judgment stands.

I don’t care if you like Joe Rogan or not, if you want him on Spotify or not, the bottom line is that Spotify has the complete right to cancel him or not. And if they do… Rogan, contractual details aside, has the right to make a deal with any other outlet, of which there are many, or go into business himself. It’s not like Spotify is his only opportunity.

As for canceling a conservative viewpoint… Why is it the right calls the left snowflakes, goes on about how wimpy they are, but continually cries that it is being unfairly silenced? Hell, Fox News eclipses the ratings of CNN and MSNBC. Morgan Wallen was canceled for using the n-word and he still ended up with the biggest selling album of the year, despite the fact that most radio stations refused to play it. Believe me, if Joe Rogan leaves Spotify he won’t go unheard, his fans will follow him somewhere new just like Howard Stern’s fans followed him to Sirius, AND THEY HAD TO PAY!

Having said that, distribution is king. It’s hard to reach people. Which is why no alternative to Twitter has emerged. Sure, start your own brief message social network, Trump says he’s launching one, but even before it has gone up there are questions about its financial legality.

So as a society, we are fully within our rights to try and diminish the reach of misinformation, messages contrary to the health of society. I mean isn’t that what is wrong, that there are no agreed upon facts anymore? Hell, we have an NBA player saying the earth is FLAT! I mean we’re not living in the 1400s, we’ve got photos from space, isn’t this settled science? I guess not.

But do we want this inane opinion on the front page, taken seriously, no, we don’t want it anywhere unless it’s for a laugh. That’s right, let’s give misinformation the same placement and amplification as correct information. Because otherwise those spewing inanities will be CENSORED! Well, no. That’s not what the law says.

Furthermore, that’s how we got into this mess. The false equivalencies in the news. Which prints the right and left opinions even when the right’s, and it’s always the right’s, is just made up malarkey!

And then there’s all this beating up of Biden, when the fact is the economy is RAGING! But in polls, people say the economy is the big problem. Huh? That’s just because the news has never gotten to them, the facts. As for inflation, it’s about supply and demand, and interest rates too, everybody’s shopping and because of supply chain issues there’s little product and prices have gone up. It’s bad that your salary is not keeping up, but every expert says they expect inflation to ease by the end of the year, when supply catches up with demand.

And the fact that Old Joe was snookered by the Republican Congress when everybody on the street knew they would never compromise, that they wanted to thwart anything Biden proposed, is completely confounding. I mean no one’s passionate about Joe, but is public passion the only metric?

I mean people are passionate about Joe Rogan, but that does not make him right. And this guy champions Ivermectin, which every test has said doesn’t work against Covid. Have you been reading the reports of relatives of the infected arguing for Ivermectin with doctors? That’s right, this guy has a decade of training but Joe Rogan knows more. I mean how can you run a society like this?

We’re not doing a good job of it.

I mean on many subjects there can be a difference of opinion, there can be debate, but that’s not what’s going on now. One side is basing its decisions on science, and the other is just making it up as they go!

As for experts… Let’s go back to that guy who said vaccines cause autism. HE FAKED THE DATA! The study has been completely discredited. But as a result there are kids without vaccinations today, measles is back.

I mean this is like someone saying swimming causes mental retardation, so then believers stop swimming.

Or that asparagus causes lung cancer.

Or that fresh air leads to agoraphobia in children.

I mean if we can’t agree on some basics, we’re completely screwed.

So, the government wants to stop distributing the Regeneron and Lilly antibodies because they don’t work on Omicron, but Ron DeSantis says NO! He wants them provided in Florida. What next, placebos as vaccines? It’s not like the antibodies are political, it’s a scientific issue, the companies themselves posted the numbers. And now 99% of the infections in America are Omicron.

Do new facts arise, do we learn, do we make mistakes along the way? OF COURSE WE DO! That’s the nature of the scientific method, that’s the nature of being human, but now we’ve got litmus tests, Trump is inviolate, you can never admit you’re wrong, you’ve got to pledge fealty to the team, even if it’s a death cult.

Yes, more unvaxxed are dying than vaxxed. The odds are double digit times higher that the unvaxxed will be hospitalized. But my inbox fills up with just the opposite. Yes, I’ve got tons of e-mails saying you don’t want to get the vaccine because it causes you to die if you get infected with Covid, just the opposite of the truth.

And where are these people getting their information?

From Joe Rogan and people like him.

Do we want Joe’s voice to be amplified?

OF COURSE NOT!

Of course Joe could stop spreading falsehoods, stop featuring the discredited on his podcast, but he refuses to do this. And when confronted with this issue he just claims he’s an idiot. Yeah, right. This guy is so self-satisfied he doesn’t believe that whatsoever. So you’ve got a podcaster with no training acting as the Covid minister of choice. That’s right, famous people get sick and call Joe and do what he tells them.

I just want these same people to refuse medical help when they’re really sick.

And then Howard Stern says he wants the unvaxxed to be refused treatment and…this is a big story on the right. Yes, Howard was being histrionic, BUT YOU TELL ME TUCKER CARLSON IS NOT?

And the truth is in France you can’t go anywhere unless you’re vaxxed, and you’ve got to show a passport to get into buildings. France has got issues, but it’s far from an authoritarian dictatorship. Hell, what would be happening in Ukraine now if Trump was still president. Oh, I know, he’d say he spoke with Putin and trusted him… When everybody knows the guy is completely untrustworthy!

I’m not saying the left is perfect, but the bottom line is they’ve got their feet planted on the ground much more than the right. As for creeping socialism… Unions, higher minimum wage, guaranteed pay…isn’t this exactly what the underclass who used to be Democrats and are now Republicans want?

No, they want their freedom.

Well, the truth is Joe Rogan has plenty of freedom. And Spotify has the freedom to say it doesn’t want Joe on its platform. Will they do this? I have no idea, but they’ve got the right, AND IT’S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH CENSORSHIP!