Neil Young

[musoschmuso]

Hey,

I'm sure a lot of users are aware of the whole Neil Young situation and his decision to remove his music due to his concerns about what he considers bad quality, but what do you think will come of this? He claims he'll consider coming back if the quality is improved but one of Spotify's selling points for its premium service is the ability to stream 320kbps and I can't see them upping the quality across the board. Regardless, I think Neil Young has an issue with MP3 as a whole.

Neil Young certainly sticks to his convictions, so unfortunately I can't see him taking a U-turn unless his concerns are addressed, but I think this would be very expensive for Spotify and not something that the majority of users would really be overly enthusiastic about as real audiophiles are few and far between. I really hope such a big name abandoning Spotify won't encourage too many others to do so...

Edit: Sorry if this has been covered already, I couldn't find any threads about it.

[shweeney]

Just logged onto Spotify today and I see he has followed through with his threat, all that is now available is stuff from his dismal 1980s Geffen period.

I love Neil's music (well, some of it) but Neil himself is an increasingly cranky old fool.

a) People in general don't give a darn about sound quality

b) Most people listen to music on their phones with the bundled headphones which are invariably crap

c) Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 320Kb/s MP3 and a CD in a blind test anyway (hearing range declines dramatically with age, I really doubt Neil could tell the difference).

d) Neil is happy to let his music be played on FM and AM radio which has terrible sound quality

e) His "Pono" HD music player is going to be an abject failure (see point a)

f) His album from last year "A Letter Home" was recorded in a Voice-o-Graph vinyl recording booth and is one of the lowest quality recordings ever released by a major artist.

g) People in general don't give a darn about sound quality (worth repeating this point).

[musoschmuso]

Totally. I hope some sort of agreement can be arranged that is fair and satisfactory to both parties as it's a little embarrassing for a man with such a brilliant body of work to reduce himself to the lacklustre albums that have survived the removal. Obviously the will of the artist should be the most important factor here, but I hope he reconsiders his stance on streaming or reaches some sort of monetary agreement, if that's the issue.

I agree that artists are being treated unfairly by the labels for the most part at the moment, which is a shame as Spotify's potential to be a vast and comprehensive library of music could be jeopardised by greed. As for Neil Young however, I've filled the gap by buying a couple of his albums (second hand - sorry Neil) on CD. 

[djdon77]

I just tried to access my Neil Young catalog on Spotify! Thanks for the info! IMO the quality is fine!! What is he really trying to pull? 1st Prince, now NY!! WTH

[sound_fury_pod]

Neil's full catalog is now back on Spotify as of today 4/11/2016

[user-removed]

@sound_fury_pod

Almost complete, I just went through my personal playlist collection I have of Young's various solo work projects and releases that have currently come back onto the Spotify service, from a U.S. account.

What is still missing but might not be much of a big deal, but for dire hard fans is the 1976 release of Zuma which was a Crazy Horse collaboration effort, but was at one time on just the Neil Young artist page, maybe later on it will show up on the Neil Young & Crazy Horse artist page?

Also the 1991 release of Weld (Live) which this is also a Neil Young & Crazy Horse live release of content.

The 2003 Greendale Live At Vicar St. though this is also a Neil Young & Crazy Horse live release of the studio album of Greendale recorded live in it's entirety.

But for the most part everything is back, and a couple of odds and ends that was not here before the pulling of most of Young's releases from the Spotify service? Chrome Dreams II showed up, and also the Dead Man movie soundtrack that Neil Young provided guitar work for throughout the film score of the same named movie seems to maybe be something added as a bonus? I am not sure now though, Young's content had been gone for so long I can't remember now.

[zuumuu]

"Albuqerque" by Neil Young doesn't play when offline streaming with premium, could someone please fix this?

[Jazzwhatever]

@sound_fury_pod Yes! I'm happy, truly missed his classic albums on Spotify!