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Spotify Platform Rules

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Hmm, there's a song I like called Cop Killer by John Maus.

Lyric wise, it's pretty sparse but here's an excerpt

> Cop killer

> Let's kill the cops tonight

> Kill them, cop killer

> Let's kill every cop in sight, cop killer

I feel like to some hard pressed reviewer just looking at the lyrics, they would easily be seen as violating the following:

> Content that advocates or glorifies serious physical harm towards an individual or group includes, but may not be limited to:

> inciting or threatening serious physical harm or acts of violence against a specific target or specific group

Needless to say, I haven't been compelled to kill any cops as a result of the song.

Here's an excerpt from an interview about the track:

> "I've always wanted to do something with that lyric," says the excitable Minnesotan, words gushing out of him in an enthusiastic torrent.

> "Cop Killer is the perfect way of putting over the idea that any worthwhile political or artistic agenda should be seeking an undoing of the situation as it stands. Whether the status quo is a political state or a musical language, the idea should be to kill or overthrow that. The song's not about killing a human being, but about overcoming inhumanity; destroying the machinery that turns us toward an end other than ourselves."

Who does this apply to? I still see NWA’s music on Spotify

Edit: didn’t mean to single out NWA. Eminem’s Purple Pills and Johnny Cash’s Cocaine Blues also come to mind

Which wouldn't be surprising because artistic expression is generally treated differently from political advocacy. For example, calling for concrete acts of violence is in most jurisdictions illegal while the bar for fiction that glorifies violence is quite a lot higher. Same would presumably go for say a fictional work that could be interpreted as giving bad medical advice compared to someone trying to pass as an actual medical professional on a podcast.

edit: here in Germany for example neo-nazi propaganda is pretty much banned, but Triumph of the Will is not. In particular if it becomes a historical time piece which old school gangster rap almost is, it isn't comparable to calls to action.

As a huge fan of rap music in general, I think there are many songs which promote illegal activities.

I think, for me, the core issue is that I want my subscription money going to music, and not to podcasting.

I think the only way Spotify and others get through this is to direct your subscription dues to whatever you listen to. That way you can "vote with your ears" and if they put something you don't like on the platform (from your perspective) on the platform, you just don't listen to it, and your money isn't going to it.

Hopefully they get there. Until then, I've moved to another all-music platform to get halfway there.

Isn't that exactly how it works? You listen to something and the artist gets a share of the profits. Same as YouTube.

Personally, I still don't think that should make these platforms immune from content scrutiny. There's implicit granting of authenticity when a global leader like Spotify or YouTube hosts content and puts their brand behind it, so I think it's fair they get to decide what is acceptable or not. ESPECIALLY when something is controversial, better to just get it off the platform and take a position that they do not want their brand attached to it.

Facebook and Twitter went all in on free speech for years, beyond any reasonable doubt and it still burnt them. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

In most cases, yes.

But someone is paying for the guaranteed $100M too, and they aren't going to get there with streams at the rate they are paying, so it's probably me as a well.

I don't want that. I am suggesting that they should also switch to a pure pay for stream model so I don't have to pay for podcasts (don't want that from Spotify).

Isn't this how it already works? I thought people on Spotify were paid (very little) "per stream".

This is not how it works. If you subscribe and listen to Bad Apple!! once per month, the rightsholders of that song will not be paid 70% of your subscription cost because of you, or even 1%.

You’re acting as if Spotify increased their prices to pay Joe Rogan. If this really is the core issue for you, why are you ok paying $x/month to listen to your music, but suddenly unhappy about Spotify paying for podcasts, when you still pay $x/month. It isn’t like Spotify reduced the amount they pay music artists per listen.

Are you sure they didn't reduce the amount they pay artists? How do you know that?

If they didn't sign this deal, could they pay the artists more?

Um.. because bit a single artist has said their pay was reduced. Lol. What is this argument?

While this is almost assuredly in response to the Media circus around Joe Rogan, I find the child exploitation section interesting.

How many pop singers should this ban, if actually applied equally. Would Britney Spears (who debuted at 16 I believe?) have been banned on this. Many of the Disney type pop singers, that they always have a few around, would probably be banned on this. A rather large portion of the music industry should fall afoul of "promoting, normalizing, or glorifying child grooming behaviors".

Looks like we might be leaving the golden era of music streaming like we are past the golden era of video streaming. Was a good run where basically all content was available on all platforms, but it looks like we will be facing pretty bad fragmentation from now on.

Well, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. Spotify already had a pretty terrible track record of removing music (if you've got a playlist more than a few years old, half of it is likely gone), and this is unlikely to improve the situation in any capacity. I intend to backup my playlists tonight and get out of dodge while I still can.

I just signed up for spotify premium for the first time to show support for them keeping Rogan. Luckily I'm still in my trial period so I can quit without loss.

The unfortunate thing is I really like the service. I was blown away that when I started playing a song on my phone, the linux app saw that and picked it up, and even let me pause from the computer! That is really neat. The recommendations are also really good too. This disappoints me greatly.

Their desktop app is pretty good, and even feature-complete (and moddable!) on Linux these days which is commendable if nothing else. I generally didn't care about the Rogan controversy (if anything I found his content excruciatingly boring, but not reprehensible), but seeing them tighten down their policy makes me incredibly wary of the platform's future. I don't need a music syncing service, I already have Syncthing. I don't need a podcast app, I have RSS. I pay for Spotify because it's convenient, but if they're increasing moderation and enforcing ludicrous double-standards like this, their value-add over hosting my own music starts waning considerably.

As a counterpoint, I have playlists from 2015 that are still complete. I listen to a lot of music and have only seen a full album removed once, and have seen a dozen or less songs removed. Not saying the original commenter is wrong, just sharing a different experience.

Many think the recent Joe Rogan heat is because he's recorded (but not yet released) a podcast with Maajid Nawaz, who is a pretty big critic of government/pharma covid narratives. I think this is having a Streisand effect for this episode whenever it drops.

Maybe?... except, while I have heard a ton of stuff about this Spotify/Rogan issue many times a day for days now, you are the only person I have seen mention this angle or that coming episode (and it was dumb luck that I saw your comment, as I wasn't expecting anything new and so was just kind of glancing over this thread for what the splash damage of Spotify's "rules" might be).

If you are correct about the reason for this "recent heat", the strategy for people to misdirect the issue about something else and then drown out the actual issue while tiring out the media on the overall subject does seem like it could bypass "telling people not to look at or talk about X makes them want to look at X and talk about X" as you are making the whole issue about some unrelated-seeming Y.

Is this new, or was it always there?

It appears that this is new: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.spotify.com/us/pla...

The only feature keeping me subscribed to Spotify is their Spotify Connect feature. Being able to seamlessly cast to all of my devices directly from the Spotify app is invaluable and no other streaming service I have tried has anything close.

I've been using Plexamp recently and supposedly they're adding a similar feature to Spotify Connect relatively soon: https://twitter.com/plexamp/status/1489024846033915908

Spotify’s cookie pop up is deceptive and should violate their own rules

If Spotify throws Rogan under the bus, what alternatives exist?

He always says he's got FU Money, he should put his money where his mouth is and go it alone.

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