(Los Angeles) Spotify will take steps to combat misinformation about COVID-19 on its platform, the Swedish online music giant announced on Sunday, after a boycott started by folk rock legend Neil Young.
Posted at 4:26 p.m.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have expressed “concerns” to their partner Spotify about the misinformation present on the audio streaming platform, their Archewell Foundation announced on Sunday, after the departure of singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
“Last April, our co-founders began raising concerns with our partners at Spotify about the very real consequences of COVID-19-related misinformation on their platform,” the Archewell spokesperson said. assuring that the couple had since reiterated their concerns, in a press release sent to AFP.
The couple entered into a multi-year partnership with Spotify in December 2020 to produce a podcast called Archewell Audio, a contract estimated at 25 million dollars by several media including the New York Post and the BBC.
On Sunday, Spotify announced new measures to combat misinformation about COVID-19 on its platform. The world number one in music streaming will notably introduce links in all podcasts evoking COVID-19, to guide its users to factual and scientifically sourced information, announced its CEO and founder Daniel Ek in a press release.
This week, folk rock legend Neil Young announced his retirement from the platform.
The singer, who denounces “lies sold for money”, is engaged in a fight against popular and controversial American host Joe Rogan’s podcast, hosted exclusively on Spotify. Since then, country singer Joni Mitchell and rocker Nils Lofgren have followed him, and a hashtag has emerged on social media, #deleteSpotify (delete Spotify).
Neil Young has 2.4 million subscribers and more than six million listeners per month on Spotify, the world leader in music streaming. But Joe Rogan’s podcast, which has racked up millions of plays, was number 1 on Spotify in 2021.
Joe Rogan, whose contract signed with Spotify last year is estimated at $100 million, is accused of discouraging young people from vaccination and pushing the use of an unauthorized treatment, the ivermectin, against the virus.