Spotify Join Other Big Brands Fighting White Supremacy
The disparate collection of alt-right, white supremacist, racist KKK members and neo-Nazis from around the US came out from behind their screens and pepe memes and proved themselves to be a tangible, dangerous force.
Though, as murdered Heather Heyer's Facebook cover photo prior to the Charlottesville riot reads, 'If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention.'
For a long time people have presumed that the far right groups are minority groups, that they wouldn't be emboldened enough to rally on any large scale and that most people aren't racist and that's enough.
People were wrong though.
And now, on the back foot, in the wake of violence and a murder, we're starting to wake up to the fact that the good people of the world have a lot of work to do and big companies have to play their part, actively, incontrovertibly.
The Mormon Church finally took the unequivocal stance against racism that many people had been waiting for and now big consumer brands, like Spotify, are beginning to play their part.
So far the website hosting company GoDaddy has reportedly banned the white supremacist site The Daily Stormer from its platform.
Most recently, the music-streaming service Spotify has begun removing hate music from its library.
Three years ago the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) published a list of bands that were involved in a 'white power music scene' and centred their efforts on removing the band names on iTunes.
However, on Monday Digital Music News identified 37 bands from SPLC's list that still remained on Spotify.
Once Spotify became aware, they made moves to remove the music in question.
A spokesperson for Spotify told Billboard that 'illegal content or material that favours hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us.'
The continued:
Spotify takes immediate action to remove any such material as soon as it has been brought to our attention. We are glad to have been alerted to this content - and have already removed many of the bands identified today, whilst urgently reviewing the remainder.
Apparently, they will also make efforts to block this type of music from being aggregated to the site in the first place.
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