India Arie Pulls Music From Spotify Over Joe Rogan Controversy

Joe Rogan has been on the news lately. The podcast host made some controversial claims which lead to him incurring heavy criticism from public. Following in the footsteps of several pop acts, India Arie has decided to pull her music off Spotify, the platform Joe hosts his podcast.

India took to Instagram to make her displeasure with Rogan’s “language around race” comment known. She wrote, “I have decided to pull my music and podcast from Spotify,”

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.”

Arie may have been referring to Joe’s recent claim that calling someone black is weird unless, ” you are talking to someone who is like 100% African from the darkest place where they are 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.

Meanwhile, as of Tuesday morning, Arie’s music is still available to stream on Spotify. Just days earlier, Neil Young threatened to leave Spotify if the platform didn’t take action against Joe Rogan for spreading Covid-19 misinformation.

However, the music streaming giant refused to take down Rogan’s podcast. They said in a statement, “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

“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.

Joni Mitchell also joined Neil Young in his crusade against Spotify. Joni said, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify, Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives.” Soon after the Joe responded to the controversy surrounding him. He took to Instagram to share a 10-min long video explaining his actions.

Meanwhile, you can check out India Arie’s announcement below.

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