R. Kelly and X-X-XTentation songs removed from Spotify playlists over hate content policy

As part of its new Hate Content and Hateful Conduct Policy, all R. Kelly tracks and at least one by X.X.XTentation.

Spofity told Billboard in a statement:

“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.”

Jonathan Prince, Spotify’s vp/head of content and marketplace policy, also told Billboard.

When we look at promotion, we look at issues around hateful conduct, where you have an artist or another creator who has done something off-platform that is so particularly out of line with our values, egregious, in a way that it becomes something that we don’t want to associate ourselves with. So we’ve decided that in some circumstances, we may choose to not work with that artist or their content in the same way — to not program it, to not playlist it, to not do artist marketing campaigns with that artist.”

It is important to note that Spotify is not censoring the songs and they can still be found via searching for them. They will not be part of any playlists however.