Thursday, December 5, 2024

Morning Report: Spotify Stock Actually Recovers After Neil Young’s Exit, Barry Manilow Has Not Pulled Out

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Here’s the latest on the Neil Young-Spotify feud:

This morning the Spotify stock sagged a bit but now it’s recovered and going up actually. Spotify stock is down $20 or so since Tuesday when Young first demanded that Spotify remove his music over Joe Rogan’s misinformation disseminated on his podcast.

There was some talk of other artists joining in with Young, but so far no one has taken a side. A rumor started that Barry Manilow, of all people, was pulling his music off the streamer in solidarity with Young. But Manilow never said a word, and no one knows where that started. Plus, Manilow sold his catalog in 2020 to Hipgnosis Music. He probably doesn’t have the right to yank it anyway.

I empathize with Neil Young. We are living in a peculiar time when rednecks and lunkheads are interfering with public health and education. That a man waiting for a heart transplant refuses to take the vaccine for COVID really spells it out. There’s no basic sense of logic. Did these people always exist, or did Trump enable them? Everyday there are reports of anti-vaxxers dying and it seems to no impact on their fellow dolts. Go figure.

As for Neil, he streams his own music through the Neil Young Archives, which puts him a different position than most artists. Also, there must be some people listening to him on his defunct Pono player, right?

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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