India Arie has announced plans to remove her music from Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast, following in the footsteps of music legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. However, the R&B singer’s reasons for leaving the streaming service aren’t just related to COVID-19.
Taking to Instagram on Monday (January 31), India Arie revealed she doesn’t agree with Rogan’s “language around race.”
“I have decided to pull my music and podcast from Spotify,” she wrote. “Neil Young opened a door that I MUST walk through. I believe in freedom of speech. However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons OTHER than his Covid interviews… FOR ME ITS ALSO HIS language around race. What I am talking about is RESPECT – who gets it and who doesn’t.”
While Arie didn’t specify which of Rogan’s race-related comments she found problematic, the podcast host recently came under fire for saying it’s “weird” to call people Black unless they’re “100% African, from the darkest place, where they’re not wearing any clothes all day.”
She also called out Spotify for paying more money to Joe Rogan as a podcast host than they provide to artists.
“Paying musicians a fraction of a penny and HIM $100M?” she added. “This shows the type of company they are and the company that they keep. I’m tired.”
As of Tuesday morning (February 1), India Arie’s music is still available to stream on Spotify.
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Neil Young threatened to leave Spotify on January 24 if they didn’t take down popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, which has been criticized for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
He continued, “With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
Spotify responded in a statement, “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. 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.
“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
Joni Mitchell also joined Neil Young is taking down her music, while showing support to people working in medical fields.
“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” she said. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
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Joe Rogan responded to the controversy in a nearly 10-minute video posted to Instagram on Sunday (January 30).
“I’m not trying to promote misinformation,” he said in the clip. “I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. But I try to correct them. Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth.”
Rogan said its weird to call people black when they are brown, and he said white people arent actually white, as in the color white. he also mentioned many other colors. But ofc people try to make him out to be racist. I guess thats why snoop had the time of his life on the podcast, for over 4 hours? Toe Rogan is a stupid TRT chimpanzee but you people lying about shit he says and twisting his words are making people support him even more, ffs.
With all honesty though, the racial stuff he said was weird and kind of like something you’d hear a child say but I don’t know anyone who’s called him racist.
It was weird as shit indeed, weirdly worded but you could understand what he meant. This bitch the article is about is trying to make it about him being racist though.
Defending him while calling her a bitch, you don’t see anything wrong with that. Some whites don’t know how to be specific, or get their point across without sounding like a fucking idiot. That’s where their problems come in.
rogan is a dick no doubt but money talks on this one. the question to Spotify is who is more valuable financially? rogan or the artists threatening to leave? I think more musician are going to find something to cancel him for just to look like they stand for something. the superhero complex is strong with them americans you know
This is some of the most ridiculous shit I’ve seen in a while! If you don’t like what Joe Rogan has to say then don’t listen to him! There’re literally millions of other things to listen to on Spotify. Furthermore, it’s well known that Spotify pays artists next to nothing so why did no one take a stand on that front instead of trying to protest and silence Joe Rogan?
Another has been artist that no one cares about. “Oh, you not feeling me?
Fine, it cost you nothing, pay me no mind” – Jay-Z
Today it’s Spotify and Joe Rogan. Who will it be tomorrow? Listen to Brother Ali “Before They Were White” for a history of the fabricated term “white”. The terms were created to divide and conquer poor European immigrants and Africans, a diabolically genius military strategy that is still playing out today. The plantation owners are now buying spaceships while we argue about podcasts…
People in United States are the only people in the world fascinated with skin color.
yeah those chinese love the japanese and the germans loved the tribe, russians love ukranians…. does it really matter why certain cultures hate eachother? skin color just a visible queue
Hmmmmmm, I think someone is out of date.
“Language around race” is another bogus phrase invented by the weirdos who want to censor everything. Notice she didn’t just say racist because nothing about the interview was racist! Rogan and Peterson are simply pointing out how silly some of the divisions created by race are.
Oh no, who will be next to drop Spotify, MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice!!? Joe Rogan is in trouble!
So should she also pull her music and podcast from every platform because hip hop has songs that talk bad about women and is represented on all platforms?? This cancel culture will just never end and now artists are going to start being canceled everywhere… Its all fun and games till the cancel comes for YOU
She has the freedom to say what she wants in her music, but others can’t?
Shutup bitch
White:Black biracial people pick and choose when they want to be black or white. If they see an advantage to be black, they will be black, vice versa
First, how can she be a “legend” when so many don’t have a clue who she is. Second, how convenient she jump on the “please someone show me attention” train but use the race card. Do these has-been celebrities not realize that no one gives a damn about them???
1. Thank god her shitty music is off Spotify wich I never heard by the way.
2. Come on black folks, yall need to calm down before we bring them chains out again.
3. Blacks can have a conversation about skin color but white ppl can’t? Yall need to grow the fuuuuck up!
Sick of this shit, yall can cancel MY DICK from now on.
sure thing anonymous commenter.
this cat is the kinda guy who locks his doors if he sees a black guy using the crosswalk LMAO
Ur a fukkin clown racist prick
I think your sister is horny, you might want to go check.
I don’t have a sister…..but your mother is sucking on that crack pipe, you might want to go check 🙂
But her music still on there?and I mean her lost like who really heard of India Arie since early 2000’s??♀️
It was an awkward statement for sure, but I get what he was trying to say. She’s just looking for attention because how else is anyone talking about India Arie in 2022? But the retards on twitter are gonna eat that shit up so she’ll get some gratification.
It really doesn’t matter what people think. India will continue to share what God has Blessed her with even in silence.
This is just my opinion….. Not that she even requested support
Its always a game of follow the leadsr in america. A word , action, style or w.e is popular and here comes everyone else wNting their 15 mins. Esp wanting to stifle free speech. Bye
what a load of hullabaloo. stop being such cry babies. what else is there which is questionable. you can’t just single out rogan.
Who listens to her crappy music anyways, plus all of my African buddies that are actually from Africa say the exact same thing these people are not African Americans they are Americans that are black say African American in front of a actual African and see what he says ? this is probably her attempt to try and be relevant again since it’s not the year 2000 anymore the last time she was
Your African buddies that don’t wear any clothes all day said that!? I highly doubt it! I call BS!
Legend? Had never heard about her. I guess she is getting her 15 minutes of legend, enjoy!