Spotify supporting Donald Trump is horrifically hypocritical after how they’ve treated controversial Black and Brown musicians
Spotify, one of the largest music streaming platforms in the world, is currently stuck in a controversial whirlwind. Why is the company supporting President Donald Trump, of all people?
Spotify lets almost anyone access most of history’s existing music for free (with ads) or with a premium subscription plan. This has led to major problems, like Spotify paying musicians extremely low wages for millions of music hits. As it turns out, however, scumming musicians out of proper pay isn’t the only thing this company is good at.
As reported by Pitchfork, Spotify hosted a brunch for Trump on January 19, just before his inauguration. At this brunch, many prominent right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan were present, along with a few political leaders. Spotify also made a sizeable donation of $150,000 to the Trump campaign, to the shock of many, given Spotify’s previous commitment to progressive politics on their app.
Contradictions between any DEI-related initiatives a corporation makes and the politics of the executive board are unfortunately common. Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, has been currying favor with Trump since his presidential win. This buttering up has led to a large outcry from Spotify users and activists alike.
According to Newsweek, Spotify is facing a sizeable boycott of its music streaming platform by social media users. It isn’t the first time Spotify has caught heat, as their fairly heinous royalty payment structure is also deeply unloved in the music world. It’s even worse now that they’ve won their lawsuit against unfair payout allegations.
If you ask me, this whole situation of Spotify supporting Trump is gross and hypocritical. Per the New York Times, Spotify used to uphold a policy of removing highly controversial artists from their platform. This led to the brief removals of musicians like R. Kelly and XXXTentacion, two Black musicians who were charged with abuse.
This policy, like many similar policies, was aimed disproportionately at controversial Black musicians, while many white artists seemingly got a free pass. Pretty much all of the members of Led Zeppelin were reportedly chasing underage girls, and Eric Clapton of Cream has made a lot of racist remarks. Yet they, and many other controversial white musicians, get to stay on the platform.
This hypocrisy is even more grossly apparent now that the company swings hard for one of the biggest and most powerful bigots in the country. BIPOC are always going to be penalized much harder for controversies than white people due to white privilege and preconceived notions about non-white violence being more threatening than white violence. I’m not saying that R. Kelly and XXXTentacion aren’t terrible people, but we need to have an intersectional conversation about what race is more likely to be criticized for their actions.
I’m tired of non-white people being made exceptional examples of everything we do. Spotify is gross for both their Trump support and their disgusting racial hypocrisy.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
