Kanye West continues to face the fallout from his comments against Jewish people in the media. The “All Fall Down” hitmaker has seen several of his business relationships get dropped in light of those comments, and in the process, he’s lost millions of dollars. Some are not satisfied with this, however, and certain groups are lobbying to have his music stripped from streaming platforms as well.
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, one of the most influential people in Hollywood, has called on all companies to cut business ties with Kanye West, including Apple, Spotify, Adidas. pic.twitter.com/svRUWGCQQb
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 20, 2022
Removing artists’ music from streaming has come up before in the past for the likes of R. Kelly and others. During the beginning of the R. Kelly trial and in light of mounting pressure from groups in support of his victims, Spotify initially caved and pulled all his music down from their site back in 2018. However, they eventually reversed the decision after realizing that the company had no obligation to be a “moral police” for the music industry.
In a statement released at the time, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the goal was never for them to get involved in anything outside of creating a platform for music. “That was never the goal. We’re a platform; we want art, and we want to express a lot of diverse opinions. We don’t want to be the judge and the moral police of that.” In the wake of this, they did create new terms and conditions that kept any artists deemed to violate these off of any Spotify branded playlists or content.
They said that while they do not want to ban artists based on public perception, they would ensure that all editorial playlists reflected the company’s internal values. Based on this, it’s safe to assume that West will also be spared from being pulled off the streamer (at the moment), even if that means he will no longer be in any of their playlists.
🚨 Kanye West could have his music removed from Spotify soon.
— Pop Tingz (@ThePopTingz) October 27, 2022
The platform's CEO condemned the rapper's anti-Semitic comments and said that Spotify is deciding whether or not to remove the songs. pic.twitter.com/HN6ozwOvYa
A Twitter account announced this news saying, “Streaming service Spotify announces that it will NOT drop Trumper Kanye West from its service over his shockingly antisemitic threats because they ‘did not violate Spotify’s policies.” At the time of writing, West still appears in several Spotify branded playlists as well, including “Get Turnt,” “Feeling Myself,” and “All Out 00s.”
Despite Spotify continuing to offer Kanye West’s music catlog, Stem has chosen a different route. The music platform has decided to sever ties with Kanye West. The rapper released his ‘Donda 2’ album on a stem player last year. Stem released the announcement on yesterday stating, “We’ve removed Kanye’s music from our platform, and turned down his $10 million off to buy our technology.”
Stem officially cuts ties with Kanye West and removed all his music from their platform pic.twitter.com/hrMMXq7tpV
— SAY CHEESE! 👄🧀 (@SaycheeseDGTL) October 26, 2022
Further in their statement, STEM made a commitment to give a portion of their profits to the ADL and NAACP.
