Spotify Has Removed Several Racist Bands From Its Platform, Is 'Urgently Reviewing' Others

As global tensions continue to tighten over the fact that we're legitimately having to talk about Nazis as a contemporary subject in goddamned 2017, streaming giant Spotify has removed "several" white-supremacist acts from its service.

Leaving aside questions as to why there were white-supremacist artists on Spotify in the first place — though a spokesperson told Billboard that labels and other companies are "at first hand responsible" for what appears on the platform, not to mention the difficulties it faces in policing every artist that is added to its voluminous ranks — it's good to see a swift reaction on this front, which comes in the wake of violent racism-fuelled clashes in the United States.

According to Billboard, the impetus for the mass removal was an article posted by Digital Music News, titled 'I just Found 37 White Supremacist Hate Bands on Spotify', which listed out several artists touting an overtly racist ethos.

Thus alerted to the offending material, the streaming service acted quickly as, according to the spokesperson, "illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us".

The spokesperson said that "many" of the bands identified in Digital Music News' article have already been removed, while the company is "urgently reviewing the remainder".

As DMN reports, fellow streaming service Deezer is also removing white supremacist groups from its platform, telling the site, "Deezer does not condone any type of discrimination or form of hate against individuals or groups because of their race, religion, gender or sexuality."

"We are in the process of swiftly and actively reviewing the content on our platform and have begun and will continue to remove any material that is in any way connected to any white supremacist movement or belief system," they said.