Spotify Removes Hateful Conduct Policy

In a new year where we as a society is finally opening its eyes to inappropriate conduct in the workplace and it seems that Spotify is following suit. Last month Spotify released new Hate Conduct Policy in which they announced they would stop promoting artists, among other policies, that have a history of hateful conduct. Some of these artists included R. Kelly and XXXTentacion’s music being pushed on Spotify created playlists. Today, though, Spotify has rescinded their new policy with a statement that Brooklyn Vegan has provided. See a large chunk of the statement below.

“Spotify recently shared a new policy around hate content and conduct. And while we believe our intentions were good, the language was too vague, we created confusion and concern, and didn’t spend enough time getting input from our own team and key partners before sharing new guidelines.It’s important to note that our policy had two parts. The first was related to promotional decisions in the rare cases of the most extreme artist controversies. As some have pointed out, this language was vague and left too many elements open to interpretation. We created concern that an allegation might affect artists’ chances of landing on a Spotify playlist and negatively impact their future. Some artists even worried that mistakes made in their youth would be used against them.That’s not what Spotify is about. We don’t aim to play judge and jury. We aim to connect artists and fans – and Spotify playlists are a big part of how we do that. Our playlist editors are deeply rooted in their respective cultures, and their decisions focus on what music will positively resonate with their listeners. That can vary greatly from culture to culture, and playlist to playlist. Across all genres, our role is not to regulate artists. Therefore, we are moving away from implementing a policy around artist conduct.”

It seems that, according to Spotify, there was a lot of confusion surrounding the language of their newly implemented then voided policy. Essentially, it seems that the company is just trying to avoid hate speech in music, but thought that impacting musicians’ careers was going a bit too far.

According to Pitchfork, during Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s Q&A at Code Conference, Ek discussed his regret over the rollout of the policy. It is in the works that Spotify is working to restore XXXTentacion’s music to their allocated playlists.