Spotify Pulls Music From Russian Artists Who Support Ukraine Invasion

Spotify has confirmed that several Russian artists had their music pulled from the streaming service over the past week, on account of their support for the invasion of Ukraine.

As originally reported by The Moscow Times, Spotify took action against at least five artists, including soloists Shaman, Polina Gagarina, Grigory Leps and Oleg Gazmanov, as well as the band Lyube.

The latter three have been under EU sanctions since 2022; it was in February 2022 that Russia launched its wide-scale invasion of Ukraine (the most significant attack on a European nation since World War II). As for Shaman and Gagarina, they both appeared in the latest update to the EU sanctions list, published just last week.

Representatives for Spotify explained the move in a statement shared with The Moscow Times, saying the official rules for using the platform as an artist “clearly state that we take action when we identify content which explicitly violates our content policies or local laws”. The publication notes that Spotify’s rep did not outline which parts of the platform’s policy was violated, but did stress that “upon review, these artists met the threshold for removal”.

At the time of writing, none of the aforementioned five artists appear on the Australian version of Spotify. They are however platformed on its biggest direct competitor, Apple Music – the only one whose music we couldn’t find was Lyube.

In other Spotify news, multiple Australian artists have alleged their own music has been pulled from the streaming service, with the vague reasoning of alleged “fraudulent streaming activity”.