Plenty of aging musicians are taking a stand against Joe Rogan by removing their music from Spotify. Now ex-working royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are entering the fray.
So far, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen guitarist Nils Lofgren have joined the protest against “vaccine misinformation,” which they claim Rogan is guilty of because he invites guests with all opinions onto his show. It’s unlikely they’ll hastily remove The Joe Rogan Experience, which is the number one most listened to podcast on the platform.
According to CNN, Harry and Meghan have been “urging” Spotify to take a stance against misinformation since last April. On Sunday the pair’s Archewell non-profit released a statement that detailed their thoughts.
“Last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis.”
The statement went on, “We look to Spotify to meet this moment and are committed to continuing our work together as it does.”
While the statement did not mention Rogan, or the ongoing controversy with artists removing their music from the platform, the timing of their statement plus and the use of the word “misinformation” indicates that the current situation is part of their reason for speaking up now.
Harry and Meghan shocked the world in January 2020 when they made the public announcement that they’d be leaving their positions as senior working royals in the British royal family. The move came after months of drama, including Harry accusing the press of hounding his wife and treating her unfairly. After they quit, the couple moved to Canada briefly before settling in Meghan’s home state of California more permanently along with their young son, Archie. They’ve added a daughter, Lilibet Diana, to the family in the meantime.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were worth millions when they arrived stateside to start their new lives. But they’ve been working to establish their new careers as well, including an exclusive partnership with Spotify that they announced in December 2020.
A news release said Harry and Meghan “will host and produce podcasts that build community through shared experience, narratives, and values.” Their partnership was a huge win for the platform, but still isn’t anywhere near the draw of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Recently 270 members of the medical community sent an open letter to Spotify demanding they implement a disinformation policy. Then there was subsequent outrage when Dr. Jordan Peterson was a featured guest on JRE and discussed his reservations about climate change alarmism.
These statements also aren’t aligned with Meghan and Harry’s views.
Both the Sussexes are outspoken advocates for climate awareness and believe activism is essential. In 2020, the heir to the British throne even claimed COVID-19 was nature’s revenge against people mistreating the Earth.
“At the end of the day, nature is our life source,” he said. “Somebody said to me at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s almost as though Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms for bad behavior to really take a moment and think about what we’ve done.”