Crosby, Stills & Nash are back on Spotify, five months after the supergroup left the platform in protest of Joe Rogan’s spread of COVID misinformation. The group will donate streaming profits to COVID-19 charities for “at least one month,” according to Billboard.
The musicians’ return to Spotify marks a quiet and relatively lackluster end to their protest, which largely had the effect of boosting Rogan’s subscriber count, if the podcaster is to be believed. Crosby, Stills & Nash originally announced back in February that they would be pulling their music in solidarity with sometime bandmate Neil Young, who started a series of artist protests against Spotify when he removed his music and published an open letter criticizing Rogan’s backing company.
“I’m doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing the deaths of those who believe the misinformation is being spread by them,” Young wrote in a since-deleted blog post.
Young hasn’t returned to Spotify, though, and that creates some awkwardness with the return of Crosby, Stills & Nash. While the trio’s songs are back on Spotify, their albums under the larger Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young banner include a number of omissions: songs attributed to Young are not yet available for streaming, as are several songs written by Joni Mitchell, who also protested the platform.
Here’s what their 1970 album Déjà Vu looks like on Spotify right now:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s album Déjà Vu on Spotify.
Only six of the album’s 10 tracks are available for playback, as Young and Mitchell’s music is unavailable.
Crosby, Stills & Nash said back in February that they would not be putting their music back on Spotify “until real action is taken to show that caring for humanity must be balanced with commerce.” But the group doesn’t appear to have issued an updated statement to say whether Spotify has made changes to address their concerns.
Spotify has made some small changes since the protests began. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek pledged to spend $100 million on content from marginalized groups; the company began labeling podcasts that discuss COVID-19; and Spotify published their content policies for the first time after The Verge obtained details of their narrow medical misinformation policies.
The company has also conducted damage control with at least one high-profile pair of content creators. After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle slammed the company for misinformation about COVID-19, Spotify is working with the couple’s production company to smooth things over and move forward with developing a show with Markle.
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