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Mr. Young’s Ultimatum
Neil Young is at it again— stirring up trouble with his music to defend a cause he holds dear, He is less than fondly remembered by those in Alberta who felt the sting of his on-the-scene opposition to the tar sands.
Mr. Young has now taken on Spotify the world’s biggest podcasting service. He has told Spotify that if it continues to broadcast a show by the highly popular but controversial Joe Rogan, he will insist that his music be pulled off the service. The choice, in other words, is “him or me, but not both.”
I have not listened to Mr. Rogan, nor do I listen to Spotify or know anything about its content standards; so I am in no position to pass judgment on them. But I do know that Spotify recently received a letter signed by some 270 physicians complaining that Mr. Rogan was spreading Covid misinformation and shouldn’t be given a platform. So there’s some smoke.
Mr. Rogan is a big ticket item He is the world’s most popular podcaster. Last year, he signed a $100 million contract with Spotify, so that it became his exclusive media outlet. Perhaps in light of that it is not surprising that Spotify made its decision fairly quickly. It’s sticking with Mr, Rogan and saying farewell to Mr. Young. It will no longer play his music.
Mr. Young may have lost his battle with Spotify, but he inflicted some wounds. Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren have also told Spotify to remove their music on account of Mr, Rogan’s continued presence. More artists could follow. And in a nice twist, an English musician has threatened to send more of his music to Spotify for streaming unless Mr, Rogan is pulled. Meghan and Harry—the Sonny and Cher of downmarket royalty—have expressed their concern about sharing the same platform. And Mr. Young has done all right by this move: he has already found another service that has opened a channel dedicated to playing just his music.
What interests me about the affair is the fact that Mr, Young didn’t just complain about Mr. Rogan. He put Spotify to the choice, forcing it, however briefly, to evaluate and assert its commitment to Mr. Rogan, and to consider what it was giving up in ending its relationship with Mr, Young. So giving Spotify an ultimatum makes sense here.
But issuing an ultimatum is not a step to be taken lightly; it is fraught with risk. If you threaten to do something consequential unless someone changes their behaviour, then you had better be ready to do that consequential thing if the other party declines to change their behaviour. Otherwise you will lose all your credibility. So Mr.Young had to be sure that he would survive the removal of his music from Spotify if that was the choice it made. There was no going back once he had issued the ultimatum.
When you issue an ultimatum, you are handing the other party control of the outcome. This means in turn that you must calculate your bargaining power carefully. If Mr. Young considers himself a rock icon, he is going to be in for a rude shock when he finds out that Spotify considers him nothing more than an over-the-hill hippie with a falsetto problem.
The other limitation of the ultimatum is that you are unilaterally defining the issue between the parties, leaving the other party out of the process. You are saying “take it or leave it: these are my terms.” That can be a good thing if you are adamant that the issue at hand be framed the way you see it, but it leaves no room for expanding the range of possible less extreme outcomes, The ultimatum should usually be a last-resort method of resolving domestic conflict.
On the political front, ultimatums are a big deal. Joe Biden has put his credibility on the line with his warning that any Russian incursion into Ukraine will bring about severe economic consequences. Barack Obama lost a good deal of his credibility around the world when he announced a red line in Syria, the crossing of which would precipitate an American military response—and then didn’t have a response to offer when the line was crossed. Maybe that’s why experts always prefer diplomacy over posturing.
Maybe Meghan and Harry could fill the void created by Mr.Young’s departure and record some of their favourite Sonny and Cher songs to send to Spotify.
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