Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have issued a statement addressing the ongoing row about Covid misinformation on Spotify.
In the past week, several musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have called for their music to be removed from the streaming service.
Neil Young specifically took issue with the platform for hosting The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which has been accused of spreading false information about coronavirus and the Covid vaccine.
On Sunday morning, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – who signed a multi-million dollar deal with Spotify in 2020 – spoke out about the matter in a joint statement.
“Since the inception of Archewell, we have worked to address the real-time global misinformation crisis,” they said.
“Hundreds of millions of people are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day.”
Harry and Meghan continued: “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.
“We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis. We look to Spotify to meet this moment and are committed to continuing our work together as it does.”
The Royal couple signed their exclusive deal with Spotify – rumoured to be worth around £18 million – in December 2020.
In that time, they’ve released just one episode of their podcast, a 34-minute Christmas special featuring appearances from Sir Elton John, James Corden, George The Poet and Naomi Osaka, as well as their then-one-year-old son Archie.