A Story in Pictures
Roughly two weeks after Neil Young and Joni Mitchell put a gun to their own heads, early returns suggest the ultimatum didn't work so well.
I'm sure we're all familiar with the Neil Young Spotify story at this point. In late January, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell demanded that Spotify remove Joe Rogan from the platform for spreading "misinformation." Claiming at the time that failure to do so would result in both Neil and Joni taking their balls and going home by pulling their own content off of the Spotify platform. I covered Spotify for Seeking Alpha shortly after these ultimatums and made the case that Spotify would almost certainly keep Joe Rogan and let the dinosaur rebels skedaddle. In part of that coverage, I shared some of the key listening metrics for both Young and Mitchell.
Here's the funny thing though; Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are both still on Spotify. You can check for yourself if you don't believe me. As is Joe Rogan, obviously. There's a story here in pictures that I think is very telling. Here's our first chart:
We can see on the chart above that the overall follower trend for Neil Young has been steadily going up for two years. And if you look closely, you can see a noticeable spike shortly after he put a gun to his own head with Spotify in the room. This would indicate support for Neil Young's stance. The same can be seen in Joni Mitchell's follower count below.
The unfortunate reality for both Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, however, is that they don't get paid by followers. They get paid by listeners. And their listener figures are collapsing.
The monthly streamer line is the one on the bottom. It's the exact same story for Joni Mitchell.
Since my article just two weeks ago, Neil Young's monthly listeners are down 21.6%. Joni Mitchell's are down 30.3%. These are incomprehensible declines. And they are completely abnormal from typical seasonal trends that we occasionally see in some artists. As the champ said, "f@$k the noise." The market speaks and it's louder than the noise.