Spotify: How to quit controversy-hit streaming service

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell among musicians to leave platform over host’s alleged misinformation

Spotify has been hit by a string of musicians removing their catalogs from the streaming service in protest at Joe Rogan’s alleged Covid-19 and vaccination misinformation.

The high-profile departures were led by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who have now been joined by Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist Nils Lofgren, Graham Nash and Indie Arie.

Mr Young started the trend by saying he would no longer be affiliated with Spotify, which has an exclusive podcast deal with Mr Rogan reportedly worth more than $100m.

And the Swedish streaming giant has refused to remove or censure Mr Rogan, who is the platform’s biggest podcaster, despite the widespread criticism he has faced from the scientific and medical community.

Instead, CEO Daniel Ek announced on Sunday that the company would add Covid-19 content advisory labels in response to the backlash.

“It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them,” said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Sunday, without mentioning Mr Rogan by name.

Mr Rogan addressed the issue in a nine-minute Instagram video on Sunday.

“I’m not trying to promote misinformation, I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations,” he said.

But that may not prove enough for some subscribers, who may want to cut ties with the service and sign-up elsewhere.

Spotify, which says it has 172m subscribers, has a Premium subscription service as well as a free one.

The Premium service starts at $9.99 per month and comes without adverts, access to exclusive podcasts such as Mr Rogan’s, and allows users to select songs and albums within the app.

They will also lose access to podcasts from Bill Simmons, Michelle Obama, and future content from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archwell Audio.

Most users are unable to cancel the Premium subscription on the app, because of Apple and Google app store rules.

Instead, they have to cancel online, by carrying out the following steps.

1 - Go to Spotify.com/account

2 - Click Change Plan.

3 - Scroll to the bottom of the page, then click Cancel Premium.

Some users may want to completely delete their account, which has to be downgraded to the free account first, and have to go through the following steps.

Log back into the account and go to the Close Account page, and click the green Close account button.

Go through the account deletion steps and click Continue to confirm the user understands that they will lose their data.

Spotify will then send the user an email, which they should open and click the Close My Account link included and the account will then be closed down.

The account can only be reactivated for seven days and the company will send the user and email with a reactivation link included.

The main alternative to Spotify is Apple Music, which also starts from $9.99 per month and in 2019 had 60m subscribers.

Both Spotify and Apple Music have deals with all of the major US record labels and both services have around 70m songs on their platform.