INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Two weeks after his company attempted to impose a policy targeted at curbing &hate content and hateful conduct,& Spotify CEO admitted the
company mishandled its roll out
During an interview at this week Code Conference, Daniel Ek told the crowd, &The whole goal with this was to make sure that we didn''t have
hate speech on the service
It was never about punishing one individual artist, or even naming one individual artist as well.
The policy, introduced on May 10, pulled
certain artists from Spotify curated content streams over bad conduct in their personal lives
Pushback on the policy was almost instantaneous,and reports surfaced last week that Spotify was rethinking its approach
In particular, rapper XXXTencion, who was one of two artists single out by the service (along with R
Kelly), was reportedly going to be added back to Spotify popular Rap Caviar playlist at some unspecified point.
Ek acknowledged that the
implementation could have been handled better, and that Spotify intention was never to play the role of &moral police.& The executive added
that the policy is continuing to evolve, with Spotify soliciting user feedback
Among the many thorny issues the company is navigating here is how to address those artists who have been accused — but not actually
charged or convicted — of a given crime
