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Spotify is now deciding what music is politically acceptable for listening

26 points| deafcalculus | 8 years ago |qz.com | reply

15 comments

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[+] Melchizedek|8 years ago|reply
> material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality, or the like is not tolerated by us

Wouldn't this make a lot of rap music intolerable to Spotify?

[+] quuquuquu|8 years ago|reply
A lot of early Eminem and virtually all of DMX's discography would be censored.

Which, is shocking, considering that they evolved from the "rap battle" style, where insults were piled on for their phonic qualities, rather than to explicitly associate someone with the negative qualities of the word.

[+] ursus_bonum|8 years ago|reply
Hmm yeah. Maybe censorship isn't the best weapon to use against Nazis.
[+] nxsynonym|8 years ago|reply
It feels more like a PR-grab "us-too" thing than a real moral stance.

I wonder if they would be doing this had it not been for the events of the past few weeks.

I expect more companies to follow suit. You can't have an impartial platform managed by partial people. Not saying they're wrong to do so, but it does contradict their music accessibility stance.

[+] nosuchthing|8 years ago|reply
Spotify already has an extremely restricted selection of songs. Even for popular artists it's ridiculous how narrow of a selection is in their library.

It's 2017, there's plenty of alternative services and discovery paths to finding music, and musicians.

[+] sallshibby|8 years ago|reply
What would you recommend?
[+] DKnoll|8 years ago|reply
Pretty amusing that 'American Woman' is in their patriotic playlist, since it's critical of the US.
[+] HateInAPuddle|8 years ago|reply
Ditto for 'Born in the U.S.A.', a song about the treatment of Vietnam vets.
[+] marchenko|8 years ago|reply
I would cheekily suggest that "American Woman" belongs on a "Quintessentially Canadian" playlist: the best-known song by a Canadian band, but focused on America.