As has been the talk of the music world over the past week, Neil Young has taken his music off of Spotify. It would be logical to conclude that this move would impact his overall streaming numbers, and it did, but actually in a positive way.
Citing figures from MRC Data, Billboard reports that on January 24, the day Young first expressed his dissatisfaction with Spotify (at least in terms of its relationship with Joe Rogan), his music (both solo and with bands like Crazy Horse, Promise Of The Real, and Stray Gators) was streamed 745,000 times in the US. As news of the Spotify beef made the rounds, those numbers rose to 1.1 million streams on January 25 and 1.2 million the next day. January 27 was the day Young’s music was largely off Spotify, and then, streams dipped to 792,000, which is still more than before this saga started.
The numbers quickly rose again, though, shooting up to 1.2 million streams on January 28 and slightly more on the 29th before falling down to 913,000 on the 30th.
All in all, this is how the day-by-day data played out:
- January 24 — 745,000 US streams
- January 25 — 1.1 million (up 41 percent from the previous day)
- January 26 — 1.2 million (up 16 percent)
- January 27 — 792,000 (down 35 percent)
- January 28 — 1.2 million (up 52 percent)
- January 29 — 1.2 million (up 3 percent)
- January 30 — 913,000 (down 26 percent)
Meanwhile, Joni Mitchell, one of the first major artists to follow Young in taking her music off Spotify, had a similar streaming journey:
- January 26 — 315,000
- January 27 — 322,000 (up 2 percent)
- January 28 — 347,000 (up 8 percent)
- January 29 — 699,000 (up 102 percent)
- January 30 — 508,000 (down 27 percent)
Billboard also notes, “Activity for Young and Mitchell are likely to be further reflected on Billboard‘s weekly charts dated Feb. 12, encompassing the Jan. 28-Feb. 3 tracking week.”
Neil Young is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
