Spotify’s New Rules and Hip-Hop
Somethings happen in the hip-hop community can be held off to the weekend or even the end of the month when I do other projects. Other things need to be discussed, yesterday.
Spotify announced on Thursday that it would stop promoting and/or recommending music by artists, performers and singers who have released offensive content or have acted or been involved in what is described as harmful or hatefullbehavior. The company is now valued at around 26.5 billion dollars on the stock exchange, therefore to go this route is more than understandable when looked at from the perspective of protecting oneself and their business from association with creators who have done negative things.
We don't censor content because of an artist's or creator's behavior, bu we want our editorial decisions - what we choose to program - to reflect our values.
What this quote from the official statement means is that the music that the artist produced will continue to be on the platform, but will not be put on any official playlist or promoted from this moment on. The first targets were big names in the music industry, them being R. Kelly and XXXTentacion.
Them being the first targets are both very shocking - an all-time great R&B artist past his prime and a relatively brand-new rapper - but just as well understandable if you know of their past. Both of them have been the subject of public scandals due to crimes relating to degrading women physically and sexually. To begin with the "I Believe I Can Fly" singer, his list of sins includes:
Being sued for a cool million by an ex that he dated when she was 15 and he was 24,
Having an indecent sexual relationship with an intern in 2000 when she was 17,
Facing trial for fourteen counts of child pornography, with the tapes being of himself on underage girls and apparently peeing on one (found not guilty)
Being accused of holding young women in a sex cult where they must ask permission to eat, use the bathroom
BONUS: Supposedly being married to Aaliyah when she was 15 at the time.
XXXTentacion however has had a very short amount of the time in the spotlight, becoming a Freshman on the XXL list in 2017. But in that short time, he has been accused of aggravated battery of a pregnant woman and witness tampering to name a few of the charges that he is currently facing and excluding those that he had already. When evaluating these two personalities, it's understandable why Spotify would want to create a certain distance from them. Movements such as #MuteRKelly and #TimesUp have been vocal in their support of Spotify removing these two men, there has been push back, notably Aishah White, X's spokesperson releasing the following response:
While Spotify eventually cleared up the murkiness of it all by saying that they would go through the artists on a case-by-case when it comes to those and others, I still have an opinion. There are countless creators that are on Spotify and not all of them are big fish such as X or R. Kelly, so the chances of their crimes being found are a lot smaller. To add to that, Kelly and X have never been convicted in a court of law, only in the court of public opinion; this creates a precedent in which an accusation can lead to an artist losing large sums of money. As well, there's the universal question of how far is Spotify going to go. They're focusing on past acts now, who says they won't focus on their past content as well? That means that a lot of rappers are going to lose income due to something they might've said in their past (ex: Drake, Eminem, Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Fat Joe, just to name some off the top of my head). If it affects this many artists, than this will eventually hurt the platform right? Only time will tell.