Why Spotify and Apple Music haven’t pulled Kanye West’s songs from their playlists
Apple Music and Spotify are both fighting over which of its millions of songs Kanye West has posted on his website that appear on their playlists.
In case you’re new to the story, here are a few things you need to know.
In 2015, West posted hundreds of thousands of new songs for free on his website, dubbed “Drunken Masterpiece”. They don’t appear in Apple Music’s existing music library, where they’re being given to users of the company’s paid subscription service.
Apple Music has made several moves to combat the problem, but has not removed any of West’s songs from its playlists. On the other hand, Spotify has removed many of its songs from the playlists.
Here’s what we know so far.
Apple Music has removed songs from West’s playlist
Apple Music’s team started removing hundreds of songs from West’s playlist because they violated Apple’s “terms of service”.
The songs were first removed in late February, when Apple took a “fresh look at some of the content on Mr. West’s pages and made some minor changes to the playlists and play counts.”
By mid-March, Apple decided to remove more than a hundred songs. The company followed suit earlier this week, removing another hundred. Since then, it has removed more songs, though the number is still relatively low relative to the playlists that West had published.
It’s a bit unclear why Apple made the decision to remove these songs from West’s playlists. It isn’t clear that Apple believed that they violated Apple’s copyright policy, though the company could have had a legal or aesthetic reason for making the changes. It’s also possible that Apple didn’t take West’s songs out of their playlists because they were simply too popular.
On the other hand, some people believe that Apple was trying to silence West, who has recently made the rounds on the news and social media. He has openly mocked the CEO of Apple. Here’s a brief overview of Apple’s attempts to quiet him:
Apple has tried removing these songs from his accounts
Apple’s attempt to silence