Daniel Ek, the current CEO of Spotify, made headlines earlier this week for his comments regarding Kanye West’s recent anti-Semitic remarks. Despite pressure from social media Ek decided he will not remove the rappers music from the streaming platform. In an interview with Reuters, Ek stated that although West’s comments about the Jewish community were “awful,” his music itself doesn’t violate any hate policies on Spotify. “It’s really just his music, and his music doesn’t violate our policy,” Ek said. “It’s up to his label, if they want to take action or not.”
Ek added that Spotify “would respect their wishes” if Def Jam, the record label behind the distribution of all of Kanye’s previous albums besides Donda 2, requests the removal. The motion to remove West’s music comes after he made hateful remarks towards Jewish people in his recent interviews. This isn’t the first time Spotify has received criticism for not deplatforming artists due to their personal misconduct. XXXTentacion and R Kelly are amongst the most notable to have been removed from the streaming platform in the past.