Daniel Ek Responds

Bob Lefsetz’s Original Post – “Daniel Ek Responds”

Remember when you told us:

“Spotify is a private company, it can do what it wants. As can the newspaper and the social media outlets and…”

But when Colin Kaepernick “took a knee” during the national anthem, the NFL – another private company – you told us:

“Everything is done for the money and there’s no fairness. Colin Kaepernick is an American hero but he’s banned from playing in the NFL by rich old white men. They’re taking away his right to earn a living.”

Kaepernick seems to be doing alright; in 2016 he purchased a two-bedroom luxury condo in New York City for $3.21 million and that was two years BEFORE receiving approximately $39.4 million from his Nike endorsement deal. 

Even without the NFL, Colin seems to be earning a pretty good living. Why doesn’t a private company such as the NFL or a football team within the NFL have the same rights as Spotify or a newspaper or any social media outlet to control content, actions and the behavior of the people in their employ?

And how does this have anything to do with rich old white men? In what way is this a racial issue?

But now Neil Young is a “God”!

“But now we’ve got rock god Neil Young!”

He wasn’t much of a god when he went on Howard Stern “to flog Pono and his book and his album”.

“And let’s be clear, that is why he was on, to flog Pono and his book and his album, which is kind of sad, I’d be more impressed if Neil dropped by with nothing to sell, but in these moments the divide between broadcaster and talent, between talker and singer, between performer and artist, could not have been more evident.

Old man take a look at yourself

What if you put out new music and no one cared?

Even better, what if you said you were gonna save the music business and no one cared?

Then you’d be Neil Young.”

“Just shut up. Stop trying to line your personal coffers and get in the pit with your audience. How does this help your audience Neil, if they can no longer hear your music?

So let’s forget Neil Young.

As for Neil Young, he no longer has any power, no one from his era does, he used to speak and people listened.”

“And what we’ve now learned is Colin Kaepernick was standing up for us all. Pointing out the injustice. You focused on him, he focused on the problem.”

As always, Bob, you’ve got a hypocritical double left coast standard. Neil Young is a “God” when he leaves Spotify and presses others to do the same, as long as his political agenda matches your own. But when NFL teams try to enforce rules of behavior for people they pay millions of dollars to, they are nothing more than “rich old white men” trying to control the “slaves on their plantation”.

Read what the liberal Washington Post is saying about this issue:

“First, those who celebrate freedom of association should welcome the move: Freedom of association means freedom of disassociation as well. If your neighbors annoy you, you should always be free to move somewhere the neighbors are less annoying.

Similarly, Spotify should be allowed to decide whom to do business with. If keeping Joe Rogan is more profitable than keeping Neil Young — and it almost certainly is, given Rogan’s massive audience and his exclusivity to the platform — then Spotify should be able to pick Rogan over Young.

There’s also a queasiness to Young’s attempt to convince other musicians to strong-arm Spotify by removing their wares, too. I’m wary of boycotts generally, as there are few limiting principles once you decide you cannot tolerate someone’s thinking.

Or, to return to the real estate analogy, freedom of association means you’re free to move, but you shouldn’t be able to threaten an exodus to get the homeowners’ association to evict a neighbor.

What concerns me most about Neil Young’s Spotify fight

Setting that aside, what concerns me most about all this is the siloing of society into warring tribes. It’s not enough to signal disagreement with someone when they do or say something boneheaded; the only response is full separation, an immediate partition. There’s something deeply corrosive about attempting to live in a way that demands everyone agree with you, even on a fundamental issue such as vaccination.

At least for the diverse cultural connoisseur, “Rogan or Young, not both” is a false choice. There’s no real tension in enjoying a beverage from the Israel-based SodaStream while listening to a Pink Floyd album featuring anti-Israel activist Roger Waters, just as there’s no tension in switching from “Heart of Gold” to “The Joe Rogan Experience.” The interesting consumer — the consumer who accepts that art exists separately from the artist and the artist’s political stances — contains multitudes.”

It’s time for you to raise your consciousness, Bob. Remember when the liberal Supreme Court in 1977 told the Nazi Party they had a right to march in Skokie, IL, with help from the ACLU? 

The outcome of the Skokie controversy was one of the truly great victories for the First Amendment in American history. It proved that the rule of law must and can prevail. Because of our profound commitment to the principle of free expression even in the excruciatingly painful circumstances of Skokie more than thirty years ago, we remain today the international symbol of free speech.

The seeds of the Skokie Holocaust Museum were sown more than thirty years ago, when roughly thirty members of the Nazi Party of America sought to march in Skokie. The plan was for the marchers to wear uniforms reminiscent of those worn by the members of Hitler’s Nazi Party, including swastika armbands, and to carry a party banner bearing a large swastika.   

At the time of the proposed march in 1977, Skokie, a northern Chicago suburb, had a population of about 70,000 persons, 40,000 of whom were Jewish. Approximately 5,000 of the Jewish residents were survivors of the Holocaust.

As Justice Louis Brandeis once explained, the Framers of our First Amendment knew “that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.”

Remembering the Nazis in Skokie