- After a backlash from industry partners, Spotify (SPOT +1.7%) says it's backing away from a policy aimed at artist conduct.
- In a policy update, the company says that "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."
- The company had banned musicians R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from playlists based on its policies around hate speech and hateful conduct.
- CEO Daniel Ek says "We rolled this out wrong."
- "We don't aim to play judge and jury," the company says about the first part of the policy, related to promotional decisions in case of the most extreme artist controversies. "Across all genres, our role is not to regulate artists. Therefore, we are moving away from implementing a policy around artist conduct."
- As far as hate content: "As we’ve done before, we will remove content that violates that standard. We’re not talking about offensive, explicit, or vulgar content – we’re talking about hate speech."
- Now read: Assessing Another Potential T-Mobile Merger: A Music Service Could Generate Substantial Synergies
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