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India.Arie was already tired of the meager checks she was receiving from Spotify when Neil Young decided to bolt from the platform.
Young had clashed with the streaming service over its popular podcast host, Joe Rogan, whom he accused of spreading coronavirus misinformation. The Grammy-winning R&B singer decided she would leave too, citing the low pay and Rogan’s “language around race.”
“So often, we need someone more powerful, someone people actually listen to, to open the door,” Arie said in an interview. So, “when Neil Young opened the door, I walked through, too.”
Leaving, though, proved difficult. Arie doesn’t own most of her own music. And Motown, which owns the master recordings to most of her catalogue, refuses to pull it from Spotify.
“I’m still asking. I’m going to keep asking. I’m going to find a way around it,” she said. “I want my music off Spotify.”
Other artists who pledged to leave Spotify after Young challenged the platform to choose between the rocker and Rogan found faced similar road blocks. David Crosby, a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby and Stills & Nash, had to appeal to a top industry executive that owned the rights to most of his music first.
Spotify’s clash with Young shed a new light on the inner workings of a music industry still adapting to the demand for digital music and offered new insights into how artists are paid and the power of streaming services to act as a gatekeeper to millions of music lovers. Meanwhile, big stars — from Bruce Springsteen to John Legend — have made millions selling the rights to their music, losing control over how it’s used in the process.
But for working musicians who depend on touring to make money, the new economic realities created by the pandemic and the growing influence of streaming services can be daunting.
“It’s my hope that whatever side of the culture war, the Rogan-Neil Young thing, a person may land, that people can be sympathetic to the struggle of working artists trying to get fair pay,” said Eve 6 frontman Max Collins said.
If you want “to support your favorite artists, streaming is not the way. It’s the anti-way,” said Arie, who has sold millions of records. “Where else in the world is a person paid a fraction of a penny for their real life’s work?”
Spotify declined The Post’s request for comment for this story but has said it pays artists fairly and helps musicians.
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