Neil Young restores catalog to Apple Music, Spotify & other streaming services

Young actually allowed his music on one service — Tidal — this April, Music Ally observed. While Tidal has a relatively small share of the on-demand streaming market, it does offer a unique "HiFi" tier which streams in lossless quality for people with enough bandwidth.

In July 2015 Young claimed that streaming had "ended" for him, since it offered "the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution."

Apart from his music Young is famous for his Pono brand, including the PonoPlayer and the PonoMusic download service. Both are geared towards maximum audio quality — PonoMusic, however, has been offline since July, after its platform provider Omnifone was acquired. The buyer was initially suspected to be Apple, but rumors quickly disputed that notion.

The drop in income could help explain the sudden change in policy. Young has also softened his position on iTunes downloads though, allowing his live album Earth to be distributed that way despite claiming in April that it "does not fit" there since it "breaks all their [Apple's] rules" and "couldn't all really be heard that way anyway."