Update: The story has updated to include comment from Spotify.
As the Russo-Ukrainian conflict – which began in 2014 – intensifies, Spotify playlists are being updated in real time. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military invasion of Ukraine last week, and Spotify users have already begun curating political and combative playlists like “Songs to listen to while invading Ukraine,” “Ukraine needs to be nuked,” and “Songs that hit harder than Russia’s nuke on Ukraine.”
USA Today found at least 66 suggestive or hostile playlists, in addition to a slew of others that contain mixed political messages. Despite the app’s guidelines that prohibit listeners and artists from posting sensitive, deceptive or dangerous content, Spotify – the largest music streaming service in the world with a market share of 31% – still has allowed users in favor of war, violence, or terrorism to spread provocative messages via the app.
“My initial reaction is that I’m not surprised,” Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told USA Today via Zoom. “This crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has permeated social media. It’s not just Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok – it’s the chat functions in different video games. It’s NFT collections. It’s every online community.”
A spokesperson for Spotify said the company “continues to remove content that violates our platform rules as swiftly as possible.”
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The compilations on Spotify are paired with a variety of memes, emojis, shirtless photos of Putin, and cartoon images from popular children’s TV shows – all of which seem to distract from the realities of the crisis in Ukraine. Some playlists have Spotify users professing their love for Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Others push boundaries with playlist descriptions that explicitly encourage the bombing of a hospital.
“This isn’t free speech – this is propaganda from a dictator attempting to destroy a neighboring democracy,” said Misha Zelinsky, a Fulbright Scholar and war correspondent based in Ukraine.
As the grim, grating sounds of war echo in Ukraine, Spotify users around the globe update playlists like, “WW3 Type Beat: Songs to bomb Ukraine to,” “(Expletive) Ukraine, they deserve it,” and “Kyiv killas.” Song included range anywhere from Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” and Becky Hills’ “My Heart Goes (La Di Da)” to the “National Anthem of the USSR.”
“Every place where people interact online has become, in some sense, a battlefield for the Russo-Ukrainian war, and Spotify is no exception,” Brooking, who authored a book on the weaponization of social media added.
In a statement provided to USA TODAY by a spokesperson, Spotify said, “This content is prohibited per our guidelines and along with reporting from our users, our teams are working on improving the speed with which it is identified and removed.”
Neil Young, Joe Rogan and Spotify’s free-speech defense
The first few chapters of the Spotify saga began back in January. When Neil Young removed his music in protest of comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Spotify lost over $2 billion in market value in three days. Other artists followed suit, including Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, India.Arie, Graham Nash, Failure, and David Crosby & Stephen Stills.
As listeners and artists pressed Spotify for answers surrounding controversial podcasts like Rogan’s, the media company repeatedly made the case for free speech, arguing “The Joe Rogan Experience” should remain on the platform. In an open letter posted on the company website on Jan. 30, CEO Daniel Ek said, “It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”
The platform has since implemented an advisory on podcasts that relate to COVID-19, but at the moment, Spotify still leaves room for content related to terrorism, violence, and war.
To sign up for Spotify, the guidelines are simple – users must be at least 13 years old (or the equivalent minimum age in their region), have parental/guardian consent if considered a minor in their home country, be willing to enter a binding contract with Spotify, and live in a country where the service is available. The platform prohibits dangerous, deceptive, sensitive, or illegal content, which may result in the removal of such “violative content.” The platform rules also state that repeated rule breakers may have their accounts suspended or terminated.
Spotify said it had reviewed thousands of pieces of content since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, issuing an official statement in response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The company announced Wednesday it would close its office in Russia indefinitely, in addition to restricting shows owned by Russian state-affiliated media and removing content from RT and Sputnik for its U.S. and E.U. markets.
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Due to imposed sanctions and select SWIFT financial transaction bans, Spotify and Netflix users in Russia found they were no longer able to use certain bank cards to pay for their subscriptions. Spotify users, however, don’t need a premium account to update or create playlists on the app, and many have been able to do so without being labeled as “Russian state-affiliated media.”
As malicious messages continue to spread on the platform, Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., said Spotify’s former measures are not enough.
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“This is what Russia does, you know?” she said. “And if their official channel is shut down, they’ll use other means. Spotify does have a responsibility to make sure they don’t become the new platform promoting violence – while YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other (platforms) are now taking steps to stop this violence and stop the disinformation coming out.”
Government officials in Ukraine have also called on Spotify to take action as other companies like Disney, Apple, and Netflix have done. In an open letter to Spotify and Apple Music, Mykhailo Fedorov – Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine – urged the two music streaming companies to allow Ukrainian artists to upload album art with a clear message: Stop the war.
“While you are listening to this song, Ukrainian civilians are dying from Russian bombing!” We ask Russian citizens to stop this war! To protest that regime!” the album art, which included the Ukrainian flag, read.
“We ask you to allow our artists (to) change their album covers to draw the attention to the bloody war in Ukraine,” Fedorov tweeted Tuesday morning.
He also urged Spotify to block accounts of Russian artists that “support the war and Putin’s aggressive actions.”
Violence glorified on Spotify – in many languages
But messages found on the app aren’t limited to the Russia-Ukraine war or even one language. With just a few taps, pro-Taliban playlists like “Terrorist’s bomb playlist,” and “More bangers than the Taliban,” also populate on the platform. Some rap and pop artists have adopted the term to indicate their music has a certain sense of “coolness” or “savagery,” with lyrics going so far as to say the artist is dropping “bombs like Al-Qaeda” and another donning a turban as if he were “with the Taliban.”
One pop artist has 23,498 streams and counting on her song “Taliban,” which boasts lyrics like “Aye we getting it, clapping like da Taliban. War ready, take you all the way to Pakistan.” Cover art for the song shows a Microsoft-paint-style edit of the blonde singer twerking alongside what appear to be U.S. soldiers as they enter a smoke-filled battle.
The political and provocative content is readily available on Spotify for global audiences. Spanish playlists like “Talibanes” (“The Taliban”) feature the Afghanistan flag with two bomb emojis while “Talibanes en acción,” (“The Taliban in Action”) features a photo of the fighters sitting in former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s presidential palace.
The “Let’s All Make A Bomb” playlist features a French subheader that references Putin’s recent Russian invasion – with artwork created by James Colomina, a.k.a. the “French Banksy.”
In a Russian-language collaborative playlist updated Friday to include Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” a Spotify user writes “bomb, not possible to forgive” as the subheader – a reference to the common phrase, “execute, not possible to forgive,” which has been attributed to a variety of Russian czars since Peter the Great.
The Spotify user is well aware that the comma placement holds the power of life and death. It’s the strategic comma placement that guides a person in determining whether the person is executed or pardoned – in this case, bombed or not bombed.
Бомбить, нельзя помиловать – which can be translated to “Bombing, no mercy.”
Бомбить нельзя, помиловать – or “You can’t bomb, pardon.”
“This message is horrible for anyone,” Lautman said. “I think that there should be some kind of measures put in place because I mean, whether it’s (a playlist on) bombing Ukraine or (saying) ‘I’ll go kill a cop, right now,’ There’s no difference. It’s inciting violence or supporting violence.”
She and other scholars said Spotify must be swift in moderating or, at the very least, labeling harmful accounts and messages.
“I think that’s dangerous in general, for Spotify, or for anyone, because this goes back to our kids,” she said. “If Russia is being banned on one group of networks, for them now to weaponize Spotify to get their propaganda out – people need to be aware that this is happening. What other platforms are they doing the same with?”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine-Russia: Spotify playlists feature violent, pro-war messages
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