David Crosby revealed that despite selling his music catalogue to music mogul Irving Azoff's Iconic Music Group — he'll soon be strapped. Crosby, who gladly followed estranged bandmember Neil Young in pulling his music off Spotify in the face of the recent Joe Rogan controversy, has long blamed music streaming and its owners unwillingness to compensate artists as a huge reason for his financial woes.
In a frank new interview with Stereogum, Crosby revealed, "I’m going to run out of money in a couple of years and then I’ll have to sell my house. That’s just how that is. I can’t do s*** about it. I can’t play live anymore. I’m 80-years-old and I’m very fragile health-wise. I can’t change the marketplace. They’re making the money and they’re not going to change that. They’re not going to suddenly develop a sense of moral responsibility. They’re scummy people."
As far eventually allowing his music back on the streaming platform: "No, I don’t want to be in there. I don’t like ’em and their quality’s lousy and their payscale’s lousy and I don’t want anything to do with them. . . I do not envision going back."
Crosby went on to say, "You have to understand — I don’t like Spotify. I don’t like any of the streamers, because they don’t pay us properly. Their proportion is wrong. They’re making billions with a b and they’re paying out pennies with a p. That’s not OK. It’s not OK in that it took away half my income, and it’s not OK in that, especially, it makes it impossibly difficult for young people to make it in the business. It doesn’t pay them anything. It’s wrong. I don’t like Spotify on purpose because of that. I don’t like their quality level either. They bum up the signal pretty badly. But they and all the other streaming services are ripping us off. They’re quite happy with it. They have no intention of changing it."
Not too long ago, David Crosby told us that these days he doesn't enter into any aspect of his life — personally or professionally — without a great deal of soul searching: ["I look at myself a lot, I made an awful amount of mistakes in my life, and I've done harm. And I've had to look at myself. I had a year in a prison cell to look at myself. A lot of time to think. So, I do think about what I do and why and what it means and if it's significant, or not."] SOUNDCUE (:18 OC: . . . significant or not)