Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), is celebrating Spotify’s decision to remove Neil Young’s music after the musician gave the streaming platform a choice between him or podcaster Joe Rogan.
“Bye Bye, Hey Hey, Neil Young is gone today. It’s better to boycott than to just obey. Bye Bye, Hey Hey. Seeya @Neilyoung,” Paul wrote, adding, “even though Ohio is one of the greatest protest songs of all time, free speech is kinda important also.”
In an open letter to his manager and record label earlier this week, Young demanded that his music be removed from Spotify due to vaccine misinformation spread by Joe Rogan on the streaming service, saying:“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
In a statement on Wednesday Spotify agreed to remove his music and that it regrets Young’s decision but hopes “to welcome him back soon.”
“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” the streaming service said. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.”
