Kelly is a legacy artist with no recent hits but little reliance on music-discovery engines. The theory is that the #MeToo movement, with backing from the Time’s Up organization and a pointed #MuteRKelly campaign, can finally bring him down, and that if his devout fans can’t be shamed into abandoning him, perhaps his longtime industry enablers can.Īs for XXX, a budding superstar accused of genuinely appalling crimes, including false imprisonment and aggravated battery of a pregnant woman, the stakes are higher for him and Spotify both. That he’s a flash point this week is less about new information coming to light (though fearsome reporter and tireless Kelly foe Jim DeRogatis wrote yet another disturbing report about the singer’s relationships with young women for BuzzFeed in 2017) than it is a reflection of our national climate. Kelly - all of which he denies, and which have been legally confined to his 2008 acquittal on child-pornography charges - stretch back for decades. The sexually explicit accusations against R. Spotify is betting that it’s chosen two singularly heinous targets, ones that won’t trigger a slippery-slope avalanche. 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. 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. His music will still be available on the service, but Spotify will not actively promote it. Kelly’s music from all Spotify owned and operated playlists and algorithmic recommendations such as Discover Weekly. Here’s the statement Spotify gave Billboard:

In making this decision, the single most dominant delivery system in the music business is voluntarily assuming a huge amount of moral authority. This is far from a symbolic protest, particularly in XXX’s case: Industry sources told Billboard that Spotify’s popular and industry-transformational playlists account for 20 to 30 percent of the company’s streams overall, and closer to 50 percent for newer music. Kelly and young rapper XXXTentacion - from its playlists.

On Thursday, the monolithic streaming service announced that it had removed two enormously troubled and troubling stars - legacy R&B giant R. Thanks to Spotify, we’re about to find out how much conceptual weight the word especially can bear.

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