Spotify is now deciding what music is politically acceptable for listening | Hacker News Reader

Spotify is now deciding what music is politically acceptable for listening

qz.com

26 pointsdeafcalculus15 comments

> material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality, or the like is not tolerated by us

Wouldn't this make a lot of rap music intolerable to Spotify?

A lot of early Eminem and virtually all of DMX's discography would be censored.

Which, is shocking, considering that they evolved from the "rap battle" style, where insults were piled on for their phonic qualities, rather than to explicitly associate someone with the negative qualities of the word.

Hmm yeah. Maybe censorship isn't the best weapon to use against Nazis.

It feels more like a PR-grab "us-too" thing than a real moral stance.

I wonder if they would be doing this had it not been for the events of the past few weeks.

I expect more companies to follow suit. You can't have an impartial platform managed by partial people. Not saying they're wrong to do so, but it does contradict their music accessibility stance.

Spotify already has an extremely restricted selection of songs. Even for popular artists it's ridiculous how narrow of a selection is in their library.

It's 2017, there's plenty of alternative services and discovery paths to finding music, and musicians.

What would you recommend?

Going to the local record store

So an even further limited and curated source?

http://www.music-map.com

Discogs, Bandcamp, Hardwax and Boomkat have been more than enough for all my music needs with curation from Resident Advisor and Pitchfork. I got the free month to Spotify recently to see if I have any need for it, but I've been mostly playing my own music anyways, so I guess I'll just cancel that subscription.

The way protest music is written, how could you even tell if a band was pro-nazi or anti-nazi?

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Collection_of_Pop_Classics

Someone who isn't really into punk is probably going to think they're skinheads.

Pretty amusing that 'American Woman' is in their patriotic playlist, since it's critical of the US.

Ditto for 'Born in the U.S.A.', a song about the treatment of Vietnam vets.

I would cheekily suggest that "American Woman" belongs on a "Quintessentially Canadian" playlist: the best-known song by a Canadian band, but focused on America.

The best known song by The Guess Who in the United States, yes. The Guess Who first hit top 40 in Canada with 'These Eyes' but didn't reach it in the US until 'American Woman.'

Unrelated, but if I had to pick a song about the US for a 'Quintessentially Canadian' playlist it would be 'The Gulf War Song' by Moxy Fruvous.

Cheers.

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