OK Boomer—Neil Young And The Spotify Seven Show Us How Social Influence Really Works

Neil Young’s Spotify boycott over the music platform’s hosting of controversial podcast host Joe Rogan highlights some interesting realities about influence in today’s expansive media landscape. 

This isn’t just a battle between just Young v Spotify, nor is it a battle between views regarding the pandemic, vaccines, freedom of speech, or Spotify’s economics. It’s a battle between communication platforms and formats, and even between generations. 

Conventional wisdom states that social media allows celebrities, brands, and other influencers to control their message by communicating to followers directly without gatekeepers. See for instance how Tom Brady this week bypassed the traditional sobbing-behind-the-podium retirement press conference and instead hung up his cleats via a statement on Instagram. 

Young didn’t do that. He posted a letter to his manager and label on his Neil Young Archives website (which he later deleted) to request his music be removed from Spotify. In fact, he didn’t address the issue on social at all, other than to point fans seeking his music to competing services Apple Music or Amazon Music. 

Instead, he let the press do the work for him. This is a page out of the 90s Internet-era playbook that seems almost quaint in today’s social media age. But it makes sense. Young only has 185,000 Instagram followers and just under 80,000 Twitter followers (over 500k if you add in a now-defunct account he abandoned but never transferred in 2019). 

Yet…  it worked. Just days after Young made his stand, Rogan responded with a 10-minute video on Instagram (where he has 14.4 million followers) which he reposted in Twitter (where he has 1.1 million followers). That’s a combined 15.5 million social followers to Young’s at-best 700k. Spotify also released a statement.

Say what you want about either Rogan’s or Spotify’s response to the controversy. The point is Young’s old-school actions succeeded in generating a response. When 270 scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter making the same complaint of the Rogan podcast, nothing happened. 

Of course, Young didn’t act alone. His call to arms against Spotify inspired other artists like Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, and former bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash to also pull their music, as did India Arie. 

A few things worth noting about this group. Collectively, including Young, they boast just 645,000 Instagram followers and at-best 1.1 million Twitter followers. Nils Lofgren alone has only 1,500 Instagram followers! This is not the group to engage in a social flame war with Joe Rogan or anyone else. 

Another stat to note… the average age of the Spotify Seven is 72, with the oldest being 80 (Crosby) and the youngest Arie (46). Neil Young is 76. Where are the younger artists in this debate? 

Of the seven, Young has the most Spotify monthly listeners at 5.9 million. Mitchell follows at 3.7 million, and the combined act Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young add another 2.9 million. The others don’t even break a million on their own. 

Now their musical legacy far exceeds any monthly Spotify listener count, and it’s because of that legacy that their collective voices are being heard. But since this is at least in part a battle of platforms, it’s worth comparing against the artists with far greater individual footprints on Spotify (not to mention, social). 

If even one of these artists had joined in Young’s boycott, let alone all five, this would be a much bigger story than it already is. Imagine if any of them had not only removed their music from the platform, but engaged their collective hundreds of millions of social followers to add their voice as well. 

Doing so involves taking a stand, and losing something for it. Streaming is the main revenue driver for recorded music today, at over 80% of revenues. Spotify is the leader among streaming services, with roughly 32% market share worldwide. Debates around streaming music payouts aside, pulling music from Spotify has a very real economic cost. 

Young’s move to pull his music from Spotify will cost him about $754,000 annually, according to Billboard magazine. (Rest assured, Young will do just fine. Last year he sold 50% of his songwriting income for $150 million. Crosby made a similar move.)

But this isn’t about money. It’s not about followers. It’s about something more powerful than all the social media metrics and algorithms and follower counts combined. 

It’s about having a voice, and using it. All the infrastructure created around amplifying or monetizing that voice only exists because people with influence have something to say. And whey they say it, it resonates, regardless of the platform used to transmit it. 

A small group of 70-80 year-olds with no real social footing to speak of just showed us how powerful that can be.