While moving to Berlin, naturally I needed to open a new bank account.
Friend of mine recommended N26 to me, and,
all things considered, it has treated me fine. Unfortunately I just
stumbled upon the following news: German online bank N26 to expand
crypto
trading…
Am I going to regret my decision?
German online bank N26 said on Tuesday that it would expand the list
of countries where its customers may trade cryptocurrencies to
include those in Germany and Switzerland. […]
The prices of major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether have
fallen sharply over the past year as a broader downturn in global
markets prompted investors to ditch risky assets and following the
collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.
N26 said it would roll out the expanded trading gradually over the
coming weeks.
So Spotify seems to be a shit show at the moment, at least when
sharing misinformation on their platform. At the centre of it all
seems to be Joe Rogan. Spotify made a widely reported deal with Joe
Rogan for exclusive rights to his podcast in 2020. Weirdly enough,
Rogan has also lately been under heavy scrutiny for his idiotic
statements about COVID.
In January 2022, 270 medical experts submitted an open
letter
for Spotify to moderate this misinformation on their platform. Letter
was largely prompted because of a controversial physician who openly
promoted preposterous nonsense on Joe Rogan Experience (JRE).
A few days ago, Neil Young started a protest against
Spotify
giving them an ultimatum for choosing either Young’s music or JRE. And
well… neither Young nor 270 medical experts were enough to change
Spotify’s mind about the subject since they decided that they would
rather leave JRE on their platform rather than Young.
This is a weird point of view that Spotify has taken in this case
since they have already participated in self-regulation before by
removing harmful content from their platform. This kind of content has
involved music connected one way or another to white supremacy or
neo-nazi movements and much more (very much understandably
so). Spotify also joined many other streaming platforms by removing
another nutjob Alex Jones’ podcast InfoWars from their platform for
spreading misinformation. But guess misinformation from dear Joe Rogan
is not considered harmful by their standards.
Neil Young also wrote:
I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move
off the SPOTIFY platform and stop supporting SPOTIFY’s deadly
misinformation about COVID.
Unfortunately, while writing this, not many artists have joined him in
this endeavour. But this also brings a little unfortunate truth about
the situation, Neil Young can leave Spotify without noticing it too
much. Financially, the revenue he gets from Spotify would be a very
minor source of income, especially because last year, he sold 50% of
his publishing rights to the investment fund Hipgnosis, netting him
$150m.
Also, because his fan base is definitely - in general - on the older
end of the spectrum. Yours truly is probably on the younger end. So
most likely, a more significant portion of his revenue comes from
physical products and live shows (although the latter is probably true
for many artists).
Newer artists and bands can’t really take this kind of stand against
large streaming platform since so much of their audience accesses
their music via these means. In most cases, they would like to please
Spotify, hoping to get in one of their playlists and so promoting
their music to a vast audience.
In any case, if more big artists join Young, it definitely can impact
Spotify since these kinds of heavyweight artists can pressure these
big companies. But only time will tell.