Their statement follows Neil Young and Joni Mitchell’s announcements that they would be removing their music from Spotify in objection to Joe Rogan’s podcast the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’, which is hosted by the platform and which is a source of false claims about COVID-19 and the vaccine. A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s non-profit organization Archewell said, “Since the inception of Archewell, we have worked to address the real-time global misinformation crisis. Hundreds of millions of people are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day. “Last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform,” the spokesperson says. “We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis.” This means that concerns expressed on behalf of Archewell came only months after the organization agreed to a multi-year contract with Spotify. To date, only one episode of the couple’s podcast, Archwell Audio, has aired. Hours after the Sussexes’ statement—and after self-help author Brené Brown revealed that she would not be uploading future episodes of her podcasts to the streaming platform—Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek said that the company is “implementing changes to help combat misinformation.” Next up, 10 Things That Will Happen When Queen Elizabeth II Dies
