Aging Musicians Learn About Rockin’ in the Free Market

It turns out that comedian/podcaster Joe Rogan may actually be winning his end of the effort to save free speech in America.

Five months ago, rock legend Neil Young led a stampede of aging music artists off Spotify, the popular Stockholm-based media services and audio streaming app. At issue was Spotify’s decision to keep “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on its platform.

Young – known for the anti-Nixon anthem “Ohio” and the ironically titled “Rockin’ in the Free World” – instructed his manager to ask Spotify to remove Rogan from the streaming service, otherwise, he’d take his ball (or, in this case, his solo music library) and go home. Or to Apple.

Rolling Stone reported that Young wrote: “They can have Rogan or Young,” but “not both,” linking his demand to Rogan supposedly promoting “false information about vaccines” for the coronavirus. Several of Young’s contemporaries followed him.

Rogan, for his part, said he was disappointed by the fallout.

“I’m very sorry that they feel that way,” he said. “I most certainly don’t want that. I’m a Neil Young fan. I’ve always been a Neil Young fan.”

But now some of those very artists who followed Young out the door appear to be crawling back to the platform – beginning with Young’s erstwhile bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash.

Nash, the sole Britain-born member of the group, offered this explanation of their return: “[Spotify has] taken a positive step by adding a COVID content advisory to podcasts that include a conversation about COVID, directing listeners to a COVID information hub.”

But more than that, they probably learned a valuable lesson in how a free-market economy works.

While much of the music-buying youth had never heard of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Rogan was wildly popular.

He’s one of the platform’s most downloaded podcasters. A comedian who’s hosted or starred in numerous TV shows, Rogan’s style of “everyman” interviewing has cemented his brand and made him a destination for guests spanning the political spectrum, from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Hans von Spakovsky, a First Amendment expert and a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Newsmax that “changing times do call for changing attitudes.”

And on the subject of “changing times,” Spakovsky suggested in a recent PJ Media column that Young make a lyrics revision to his anti-south ode “Southern Man” to reflect the violence seen in U.S. cities committed by far-left activists such as Antifa and elements of Black Lives Matter.

The mini-exodus from Spotify was prompted by Rogan’s interviews with highly respected medical professionals who hold varying opinions about the origin, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19. The interviews relayed theories — and facts – that sometimes contradicted the current establishment message about coronavirus.

The irony, of course, was that, all at once, some of the 1960s most anti-establishment musicians found themselves defending establishment messaging about COVID.

George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley mused in a recent column that Rogan enjoyed natural immunity from cancellation by virtue of his popularity.

“However, with the explosion of corporate censorship, free speech advocates have begun to look at figures like Rogan as ‘super survivors,’ people who seem to have natural immunities protecting them from an otherwise lethal threat,” he wrote. “If we can replicate those economic antibodies, we just might be able to develop a protection against censorship and the cancel culture.”

Spakovsky sees the attempt to cancel those holding differing viewpoints as a real threat to society and American freedom – whether it’s to get a podcaster banned from a streaming platform, or a Supreme Court justice fired from teaching a class in constitutional law at a local university.

He said it never stops because the “aggrieved” party always demands more.

“The biggest danger to our civil society and our freedom today are radical, progressive Leftists who want to cancel our culture, erase our history, extinguish our religious freedom, free speech, and Second Amendment rights under the Constitution, and implement an all-powerful, anti-democratic government and social media system that censors and silences anyone who doesn’t agree with them,” Spakovsky said.

He continued: “Does Neil Young realize that? Probably not, but as an aging rocker who is virtually unknown to today’s generation, the draw of the dollar and his need to earn royalties through services like Spotify probably overrides his supposed principles.”

And, if and when that day comes, maybe Spakovsky can suggest another change in lyrics to yet another Young classic.

Instead of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” it might be more aptly named “Rockin’ in the Free Market.”