India.Arie. Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET.
India.Arie says she will remove her music and podcast SongVersation from Spotify, making the R&B songwriter the latest musician to leave the streaming platform over comments made by Joe Rogan on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.
"Neil Young opened a door that I MUST walk through," India.Arie wrote on Instagram, referring to Young's decision to leave Spotify over vaccine misinformation on Rogan's podcast. However, India.Arie's reasons for pulling her catalog are different from Young's: "I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons OTHER than his Covid interviews," she wrote, "FOR ME IT'S ALSO HIS language around race."
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Most recently, Rogan was accused of racism over comments made on his podcast during an interview with Jordan Peterson. While discussing the complexion of Michael Eric Dyson, a Black professor who had criticized Peterson, Rogan said “Unless you are talking to someone who is like 100% African from the darkest place where they are not wearing any clothes all day and they have developed all of that melanin to protect themselves from the sun, even the term Black is weird.”
India.Arie's statement continued by attacking Spotify's controversial royalty payment for artists, contrasting it with the nine-digit payday Rogan received to bring his podcast exclusively to Spotify. "What I am talking about is RESPECT - who gets it and who doesn't. Paying musicians a Fraction of a penny? and HIM $100M?"
Read India.Arie's full statement below via Stereogum.
Since Young removed his music, artists like Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren have pulled their catalogs from Spotify in solidarity with Young. The platform has also announced a plan to add content warnings to shows that discuss COVID-19. Rogan posted a video statement to Instagram on Monday apologizing to Spotify for the controversy and opened the door to changes to his show.