The question of when controlling what people take in surpasses Censorship and becomes an intrusion on one’s free speech has long been a matter of debates.

As mediums have changed, however, so has the severity of censorship; during the age of literature, it was easy to censor books, for example, as they would just be taken out of circulation. But in the digital age where we currently reside, should we put censorship of Music and multimedia to bed as a concept?

At the start of last month, it was announced that Spotify would be removing R Kelly from their featured playlists, under the sites new Hateful Conduct Policy.

This raised valid concerns from the artist’s management team, as the singer was cleared of allegations of abuse, claiming that Spotify continues to promote other artists that are convicted felons or have been accused of domestic abuse and that R Kelly “falls into none of these categories, and it is unfortunate and shortsighted that Spotify fail to recognise this.”

R. Kelly’s management team responded to Spotify’s decision to take him off their playlists, saying the music streaming service’s “actions are without merit.” pic.twitter.com/YWn8ZmG2VA

— Krystie Lee Yandoli (@KrystieLYandoli) 10 May 2018

The policy is covered in their FAQ’s, going into varying degrees of detail about what it censors and what it considers as hateful conduct, in both kinds of music and from the creator. However, their claim in the following statement contradicts the original claim as to why they removed R Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion.

“We don’t censor content because of an artist’s or creator’s behaviour, but we want our editorial decisions – what we choose to program – to reflect our values. When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.”

It is understandable that streaming services such as Spotify, record labels, and even promoters may distance themselves from artists who are accused of questionable activities so as not to muddy their own character, but where is the statute of limitations on those accusations? If someone is accused and cleared, should they be put back on these official lists? And if we look at historical cases; Snoop Dogg in the ’90s, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, and many others, at what point do we condemn their actions and wrongdoings, or say that it was so long ago it’s irrelevant?

Continuing from their policy, Spotify describes hateful content as anything that “expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability.”

There are 35 million articles of music on Spotify, it would be impossible for them to police it all. But there are certainly bands that everyone knows discuss things that are more hateful than others.

If this policy is to work, it must be a blanket rule across. The site cannot simply jump on what is a current disdain for a certain artist, as was the case with R Kelly and the #muterkelly hashtag that gained so much traction of late, causing gigs to be cancelled.

Nevertheless, since the streaming site removed Kelly from their official playlists, his views have actually increased. According to Fortune, streams of his music across a number of sites, including both Apple and Spotify, increased from an average of 6,584,000 streams per week to 6,676,000 times in the week after the announcement was made.

With any medium, this has always been the problem with censorship; you tell people they can’t listen, read or watch something, and they immediately will want to listen to, read or watch that thing. If you believe the Bible, we can’t stay away from the forbidden fruit.

So will censorship really work, ever? It’s quite possible it won’t, at least not in the form of telling people you have removed something but it’s still accessible. Just in the last couple of days, the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, admitted that the Hateful Content policy was rolled out in a botched and vague way. The policy itself was too vague and open to interpretation and they have since agreed to reinstate XXXTentacion to the featured, official playlists. However, R Kelly has not yet been confirmed as to going back on them.

What might’ve been a wiser move for Spotify, would be to get the fine details down on their policy and before making any rash announcements about a singular artist, to maybe take a certain area of music, apply it to that and run it as trial and error before using that one singer to announce a sudden implementation.

This is, of course, something that the rest of the music industry will have to learn from, before deciding how to handle this new area of censorship and what it means in the digital age.

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