‘Buy local’: Neil Young says he will remove his music from Amazon’s streaming service

Neil Young is taking his band Crazy Horse back on the road. Nearly a decade after their last full-scale tour, the 78-year-old musician says he's moving ahead with 16 shows across North America, including one in Toronto. Young performs on the front lawn of the legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Saturday, February 25, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

TORONTO — Neil Young says he plans to pull his music off Amazon’s streaming service as he urges fans to stop supporting the corporate giant.

The legendary folk singer-songwriter and activist posted a message on his website earlier this week titled “Forget Amazon and Whole Foods,” explaining that he feels the company is among the “big corporations who have sold out America.”

In protest, he says he will “soon” remove his songs from Amazon Music.

His tracks, including “Heart of Gold” and “Rockin’ in the Free World,” were still available on Amazon’s Canadian website as of midday on Friday.

Young has been an outspoken opponent of U.S. President Donald Trump for years. In his latest message, he pointed to Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos as one of the current administration’s key supporters.

He says it’s easy for people to buy local and support their own community.

“We all have to give up something to save America from the Corporate Control Age it is entering,” he wrote in a post on Wednesday.

It’s not the first time Young has pulled his catalogue from a major streaming service because they ran against his ethics.

In 2022, he launched a boycott of Spotify, saying the platform was allowing the spread of vaccine misinformation through Joe Rogan’s podcast.

He ended that protest and returned his music to Spotify last year, saying that Apple Music and Amazon had “started serving the same disinformation podcast features,” and it was impossible to protest all three major streaming music services.

In August, Young announced he quit Facebook, with a representative from his team saying he made the call after learning that the social media platform’s new AI technology had engaged in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children. Those details were first revealed in a Reuters news report on Facebook which also said the AI technology generated false medical information for its users.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2025.

David Friend, The Canadian Press