Neil Young announced Wednesday that he is pulling his music off streaming services, complaining about the overall audio quality and also hinting about the compensation issues.
Young posted the news on Facebook.
In a second Facebook post, Young lashed out about the sound quality again, but hinted that he could be lured back.
"Streaming sucks. Streaming is the worst audio in history," the rocker wrote Wednesday. "If you want it, you got it. It's here to stay. Your choice. Copy my songs if you want to. That's free. Your choice. All my music, my life's work, is what I am preserving the way I want it to be. It's already started. My music is being removed from all streaming services. It's not good enough to sell or rent. Make streaming sound good and I will be back."
Rolling Stone wrote that Young has demanded better audio quality for digital music for a long time and even got behind Pono, a portable music player that offers higher quality digital recordings than typical streaming and MP3 players.
"There's nothing wrong with digital: It's a tool, it's a way to do things," Young said to Rolling Stone in 2014. "In 1982, I first got my 16-bit digital machines with Sony, and I used a lot of the digital master players to create things. But I noticed that if I went to digital, I lost the echo."
"After that, the ability to play loud went away — it was really loud, but whoa, it hurts. I never had it hurt before," he continued. "And it went downhill from there, instead of getting better. That was devastating. So I made the records analog for myself, and transferred them to digital. Part of me went backwards: As the resolution went up, I went backwards with the technology."
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