Following a BBC’s report that major streaming services engage in racial discrimination, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer have made amendments.
However, most of these services are not directly involved in such practices.
According to the BBC investigation, the majority of these services are “found hosting racist music.”
On that note, they may be found guilty of enabling racial discrimination across their respective platforms.
The research also revealed that over 30 artists and bands were linked to hate groups.
More specifically, the BBC revealed that some public Spotify playlist falls under a genre tied to Nazism.
Most of the tracks, albums and genres that promote this course have either been hidden or renamed.
Regardless, some contents of these songs remain unmodified.
In another scenario, the music streaming platforms removed contents that depict any of the following;
- Racism content,
- Anti-Semitic and homophobic content and,
- Hate speech
It’s not a new trend in the streaming community
While BBC’s investigation criticised the common practice among streaming services, it has been around for a long.
For instance, Spotify attempted cracking down on a related issue back in 2017.
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Then, the platform updated its hate speech policy to filter contents that fall under that category.
However, it may have failed to record a significant success in that area.
This is mostly because producers have found alternative ways to bypass some of these policies.
While Spotify attempted a crackdown on music that promotes racism, others failed to do the same.
Instead, in its defence, Apple Music hid most of the track that is guilty of the practice.
It further revealed that it had a “strong editorial guideline” that strictly banned any such content.
YouTube revealed no place for hate on its platform, debunking the possibility of such occurrence.
Spotify enjoined BBC in its quest. It stated that content that was flagged in the investigation clearly violated that policy.
Deezer outrightly condemned hate or discrimination and claimed that a process is in place to deal with this kind of issue.
In their defence, none of the services admitted to a possible bypass despite the set rule and guidelines.
What may possibly change moving forward?
Regardless of their excuses, it is glaring that some streaming platforms still encourages racism.
With the recent awareness, it is expected that more racism-related policies will be implemented across the board.
Also, streaming platforms may penalise or boycott music that promotes racism.
In the end, this discovery has reaffirmed that racism is still a battle to win against.
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