I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are back on Spotify. If you missed the story of their departures – first Young, as explained here,  then Mitchell in support of her friend and countryman.

There are all sorts of arguments Spotify. Aside from Young’s gripes, there’s also the issue of their inequitable payments to artists. As I shared here, Grace Petrie recently pointed out that the 10,000 streams her new album Build Something Better had in its first week of release earned her something in the region of just £33. I still use Spotify a lot, but I’m now making a conscious effort to use it to try out new music, rather than as a replacement for actually buying albums.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The fact that Joni and Neil are back on Spotify means that my two Dead Man Singing-related playlists are once again complete. Two tracks from Joni’s peerless album Blue feature in the unofficial soundtrack to the book, whereas that same album, along with Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, features in the list of 100 albums that Dave takes with him to his new post-death life. I’ve now added the appropriate tracks to each of the already bursting-at-the-seams bundles of musical delights. You can relive the story in order with the first of them, or put Dave Masters 100 on shuffle and let the vagaries of the algorithm lead you where they will. I can heartily recommend the latter; for all Dave’s flaws, he has excellent taste in music.

Photo by Stockcake.