CHICAGO (CBS) — A controversy continued to brew Monday between rocker Neil Young and the music streaming service Spotify – Young, upset over podcasts on the streamer that give a voice to COVID misinformation – has opened the door for other musicians and customers to leave.
And as CBS2’s Chris Tye reported Monday, it has also opened the door to a local college student to capitalize on the controversy – by way of his app.
The app created by 19-year-old Ben Rosen allows users to take their music library and playlists with then as you move between streaming services. It is an app he has run for six years now.
But as he began looking at sales numbers recently – as Neil Young’s feud with Spotify heated up — he realized, to quote Young’s onetime band Buffalo Springfield, there’s somethin’ happenin’ here.
Last week, Young pulled his music from Spotify over interviews Spotify’s Joe Rogan conducted that gave voice to COVID misinformation. Now, Young fans who subscribe to Spotify are leaving too.
“It makes total sense that that’s the kind of thing that fuels growth in my business,” said said Rosen, founder of the SongShift app.
Rosen’s business began at Deerfield High School. SongShift is an app that helps you take your music library with you as you move from one music streaming service to another.
“Due to this, we’ve seen about a seven-times increase in the last week of both the downloads and sales that we were formerly seeing,” Rosen said.
Run from his college apartment in Champaign, the University of Illinois student devised the idea with a friend back in high school. His love of computer programming, however, goes back further.
“I remember being at overnight camp, instead of being in the water, I was reading books about programming,” Rosen said.
As Rosen explained in a tutorial, SongShift matches all the sounds on Spotify and moves them to another service such as Apple Music.
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The app is free. It generates money when subscribers choose a premium version of the service.
And business has been good.
“It’s gotten us from about 35 grand in sales the previous month to around 65K in sales this month,” Rosen said.
As Neil Young makes waves, Ben Rosen is making the most of the moment.
As to how long that moment lasts, Rosen said, “It kind of depends on if more artists keep leaving Spotify.”
Will the idea that was born in high school and perfected in college become the stuff of a lifetime career?
“I think that another two years will give me a much better picture of whether or not that this will be what I do full time,” Rosen said.
And more artists are joining Young. Joni Mitchell was eyeing a similar move last week.
More fans are also leaving Spotify, using Rosen’s app to make the transition easier.
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Rosen said he is doing a week’s worth 2021-level business in one day.