India.Arie vented in a video message to clarify her reason for removing her music from Spotify. The artist condemned the company for providing insufficient royalties to musicians and for failing to discipline Joe Rogan, the podcaster who has repeatedly made racist comments on his Spotify platform.
"Spotify is built on the back of the music streaming. So they take this money that's built from streaming and they pay this guy $100 million, but they pay us .003% of the pay?" Arie said, referring to Rogan's revenue. "Just take me off. I don't wanna generate money that pays this."
The artist showed examples of Rogan's racist comments, including several times where he used the N-word.
"He shouldn't even be uttering the word. Don't even say it under any context," the singer said.
The artist first went to Instagram on Tuesday to announce that her music will be removed from Spotify.
“I have decided to pull my music and podcast from Spotify,” she wrote, according to an Instagram post. “Neil Young opened a door that I MUST walk through. I believe in freedom of speech. However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons OTHER than his COVID interviews. For me it's also his language around race.”
According to CNN, Neil Young decided to remove his music from Spotify because the platform is allowing Rogan to spread vaccine misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience.
While India.Arie praised Young and other artists for standing up against false information, she said her biggest concern is Rogan's language.
"You take this money and you pay this guy who says this stuff? No," the singer said. "It took a Neil Young to open the door for someone like me, but I will walk through it because I've been standing at this door for a long time."
The "Brown Skin" singer has been using the hashtag #WhatIfWeAllLeave to encourage other artists, Black musicians in particular, to stand up against the company and demand respect.
'What if we all leave?" she said. "Then we can start having a conversation. We can go from a conversation to a negotiation."
The 46-year-old said she spoke with officials from Spotify in recent days and they confirmed that most of the streams on the platform are Black music.
"There is the Black music that is the backbone of the whole music industry, that's the backbone of Spotify too," India.Arie said, adding that Black musicians are historically underpaid and mistreated. "There is a historical context here that makes all this matter."
