Spotify Gets Rid of R. Kelly’s Music

Spotify: It’s a digital music streaming service that gives users access to millions of songs on its platform. The Swedish company, Spotify Technology SA, was founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006 and it specializes in music, podcast, and video streaming. The service is available in over 20 countries worldwide.

R. Kelly: Robert Sylvester Kelly, better known as ‘R. Kelly’, is an American singer and record producer who has been around since the early 1990’s. The 51-year old has had a tumultuous past, just like many others in the industry do. His first legal issues dates all the way back to 1994, when he was allegedly married to a 15-year old artist called Aaliyah.

A recent story has surfaced of the music streaming service, Spotify, banning all R. Kelly music from its platform. Along with Kelly, 20-year old rapper Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, better known as XXXTentacion, will also not feature on the service anymore. Spotify representatives confirmed this news a few hours back.

“We are removing R. Kelly’s music from all Spotify owned and operated playlists and algorithmic recommendations such as Discover Weekly. His music will still be available on the service, but Spotify will not actively promote it. We don’t censor content because of an artist’s or creator’s behavior, but we want our editorial decisions – what we choose to program – to reflect our values. When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful, it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator,” Spotify told Billboard in a statement.

As per the service’s new policy, Spotify will drop the promotions of any artists involved in harmful or hateful conduct. With sexual assault, coercion and other allegations on R. Kelly, the company decided to stop featuring him on any playlists under their name. They won’t be removing R. Kelly’s music, but they don’t want to endorse artists whose behavior is out of line with their values.

So far, only R. Kelly and XXXTentacion have been taken down, but we may see a few other names join the list in the near future. As per their policy, any music that or musician who advocates violence or hatred, or discriminates in anyway against people based on parameters like race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, will not be actively promoted by Spotify. Keep watching Read Scoops for updates on any other artists who gets the axe from Spotify 😛

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