Spotify pulling Young’s songs at his request

NEW YORK — Spotify has started to remove rock star Neil Young’s songs at his request, following the musician’s protest over the streaming service airing a popular podcast that featured a figure criticized for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

Spotify said Wednesday that it regretted Young’s decision, “but hope to welcome him back soon.”

“I realized I could not continue to support Spotify’s life-threatening misinformation to the music loving people,” Young said.

Young had asked his management and record company publicly Monday to remove his music from the popular streaming service, where he had more than 6 million monthly listeners, according to his Spotify homepage.

Spotify airs the popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where last month the comedian interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who has become a hero in the anti-vaccine community. Malone has been banned from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and has falsely suggested that millions of people have been hypnotized into believing that the vaccines work to prevent serious disease.

Spotify said Thursday that “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.”

The company says it has a team of experts that reviews content, and it’s removed if the information presented can cause harm or pose a direct threat to public health. False suggestions that injecting bleach could fight the virus, that COVID-19 wasn’t real or that vaccines could be deadly were among those removed from the platform.

Young said that many of Spotify’s listeners are hearing misleading information about COVID-19. “These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information,” he said. “They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.”