It wasn't long ago when Spotify was taking a stand, declaring open season on any artist they deemed "problematic." Rooting out artists of that nature is certainly a Herculean task, but the streaming giant ultimately settled on three notable offenders. As a result of their new "Hateful Conduct" policy, XXXTentacion, R. Kelly, and Tay Kay found their music removed from all official Spotify-curated playlists, including the popular "Rap Caviar." The move went on to be met with instant backlash, with artists making strong cases against the hypocrisy of cherry-picking culprits. Now, in the wake of an alleged talking to from Kendrick Lamar, Spotify's CEO Daniel EK has issued a statement.
Speaking with Variety, Ek revealed regret over the whole debacle, stating "We rolled this out wrong and could have done a much better job. The whole goal with this was to make sure that we didn’t have hate speech. It was never about punishing one individual artist or even naming one individual artist.” Like a good leader, Ek shouldered the brunt of the weight, apparently taking personal responsibility for the misstep, which he dubbed “too ambiguous and open to interpretation.”
He proceeded to explain that Spotify never meant to target individual artists, but rather "to make sure that we didn’t have hate speech." A lofty goal, and a noble one to be sure. But if one were to remove all the miscreants and morally dubious musicians from the service, what might the end game look like?
[via]