Neil Young has announced that he is removing his discography from Amazon Music – find out more below.
In January 2022, Neil Young announced that he would be removing his music from Spotify after episodes of Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. At the time, Joe Rogan’s podcast was signed exclusively to Spotify.
He reluctantly returned to the streaming platform in 2024 after Apple Music and Amazon picked up the podcast. Young said at the time: “Spotify, the #1 streaming of low res music in the world – Spotify where you get less quality than we made, will now be home of my music again.”
“My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I opposed at Spotify. I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did with Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all.”
Now, however, Young has announced that his music will be leaving Amazon “soon”. He wrote in a new entry on his Neil Young Archives blog: “The time is here. FORGET AMAZON. Soon my music will not be there. It is easy to buy local. Support your community. Go to the local store. Don’t go back to the big corporations who have sold out America.”
He then went on to urge his fans to boycott corporations like Amazon, Meta – who owns Facebook and Instagram – and Whole Foods. Young deactivated his Facebook and Instagram accounts over Meta’s reported “unconscionable use of chatbots with children” earlier this year.
Young wrote of his boycott plea: “We all have to give up something to save America from the Corporate Control Age it is entering. They need you to buy from them. Don’t. They shut down our government, your income, your safety, your family’s health security. Take America back together, stop buying from the big corporations. Support local business. Do the right thing. Show who you are.”
He also quit X/Twitter in late 2023 after Elon Musk appeared to endorse an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. On his website, he wrote: “We are stopping all use of X we can control. For reasons that should be obvious to the richest man on Earth, we are taking this action against his company.”
Earlier this summer, Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts headlined Glastonbury 2025 and topped the bill at BST Hyde Park in London. They also played a concert at Malahide Castle in Dublin, among numerous other European dates.
In a four-star review of Young’s return to the Pyramid Stage at Glasto, NME described the performance as “a headline set that proves that sometimes, there’s still power to be found in an old-school approach”.
“It is, in short, the definition of no frills,” it read. “It’s testament to the power of Young’s songwriting, then, just how brilliantly it all works, how little the momentum drops.”
Young released his first studio album with the Chrome Hearts, ‘Talkin To The Trees’, in June.