Free Republic

“Hate” is a dangerously elastic label. And it has long been used to demonize unpopular expression, particularly among people of color. Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and most other major internet distributors took a bold step this week when they all but banned content from Infowars, a website run by the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The tech companies cited their policies against hate speech for their decision, rather than the trafficking in fake news by Infowars. It’s tempting to applaud this move, but we should be wary. While Mr. Jones’s rhetoric is certainly repugnant, mounting pressure from the political left...

This is a dangerous precedent that can be used against any ideology, left or right Across the board in what appears to be a highly-coordinated effort to silence the message behind Infowars and Alex Jones, most major social media, backbone utilities associated with our web site and video platforms have launched unprecedented account bans and suspensions on virtually all of our channels. Regardless of what you think of me, and what you have heard indirectly through third-party sources, you are clearly witnessing a 21st century purge of an ideology. And even if you don’t agree with our message that everyone...

Fast Company’s former editor and good friend Bob Safian recently returned to contribute a profile on Spotify founder Daniel Ek, in which they discussed his views on music distribution and curation. For a contrasting viewpoint, Safian also talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook about the way he and his company view music. Here’s what Cook said: “I couldn’t make it through a workout without music,” Cook says. “Music inspires, it motivates. It’s also the thing at night that helps quiet me. I think it’s better than any medicine.” Apple Music relies mainly on human curation to suggest music to users,...

Big tech’s coordinated purge of InfoWars — which was hit by bans from Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube in rapid succession — did not occur in a vacuum. On this issue, Silicon Valley bowed to CNN journalists and Democrat politicians who ceaselessly lobbied for the site to be censored. It’s a sign of how the concentration of power in America has shifted from big government to big tech that politicians are now lobbying tech companies rather than the other way round, but that’s exactly what happened over the course of the past few months, as Democrats applied relentless pressure on...

Spotify is reversing its policy on "hate content and conduct" and allowing music from artist R. Kelly to return to playlists. The music streaming company wrote in a post Friday that it believed it failed to properly roll out the policy. The policy was introduced in May, allowed the company to remove artists from playlists for problematic behavior, even if that behavior was not reflected in their music. At the time, the company removed music from artists like R. Kelly, XXXTentacion and Tay-K from playlists that it maintains in its app. R. Kelly has faced a slew of disturbing allegations...

In response to Spotify’s newly launched Hate Content and Hateful Conduct public policy, women’s advocacy group UltraViolet is calling on the streaming service to widen its net beyond R. Kelly and XXXTentacion, which were the first acts to see their music removed from promotional playlists. UltraViolet, a national organization working on a range of issues including reproductive rights, healthcare, economic security, violence and racial justice, published an open letter Monday to Spotify head Daniel Ek, applauding a recent decision to pull Kelly and XXXTentacion’s music from playlists and algorithmic recommendations. However, the group is also imploring that the policy be...

Lately, I have been discovering some old classics such as R Kelly’s 'Ignition' and Natalie Imbruglia’s 'Torn'. However, instead of listening to the original mixes, I have been enjoying some emerging bands and finding that I prefer some of them to the originals! All of the songs I am about to review are on Spotify and you can listen to them on there free of charge.

The Internet services company Dyn was hit by a cyber attack Friday, disrupting web traffic on the east coast of the United States, the company reported on its website. A slew of major sites like Twitter, Netflix, and Spotify were affected by what was described as a DDoS, or a distributed denial of service attack, that caused widespread problems across the Internet.

Anyone trying to understand why Donald Trump always has thought New Hampshire would be friendlier to him than Iowa should put aside the polls for a moment and focus on what each state's Republican voters are putting on their Spotify playlists. According to data for the week ending Feb. 1, Iowa Republicans can't stop listening to "This Is Amazing Grace" by Christian rocker Phil Wickham, which opens with the verse: "Who breaks the power of sin and darkness/Whose love is mighty and so much stronger/The King of Glory, the King above all kings." Republicans in New Hampshire, meanwhile, prefer "Idle...

A lawsuit filed in federal court against the music streaming service Spotify is seeking at least $150 million in royalties for musicians and copyright owners. The suit, filed Monday by guitarist and vocalist David Lowery of alternative rock band Cracker, alleges Spotify "knowingly, willingly, and unlawfully reproduces and distributes copyrighted" music without a license to do so, Lowery's law firm Michelman & Robinson said. Violating federal copyright law could mean fines of between $750 and $150,000 for each infringement. That could mean big payouts if the court sides with Lowery, who filed the case on behalf of himself and "all...

Detail from the cover of Scientific American's March 9, 1907 issue, which had a glowing article about the telharmonium. (Image: archive.org)It's a tumultuous time for streaming music services. One of the year's biggest albums, Adele's 25, was released on November 20, but not made available on Apple Music, Spotify, or any other streaming app by the artist's own decision. On November 23, music service Rdio, the first smartphone-era music streaming service to try to crack the U.S. market, began winding down after five years of struggling to attract paying subscribers.Rdio, however, was not the first service to allow American subscribers to stream music from their phones. That honor goes to the...

CHILMARK, Mass. — The White House is launching an official channel on the popular music streaming service Spotify with a pair of playlists it says President Barack Obama created himself. Obama was announcing his daytime and evening summer music lists Friday on his @POTUS official Twitter account. The president's daytime list includes tracks from such artists as Justin Timberlake, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley. His evening lists features music by Al Green, Frank Sinatra, Beyonce, John Coltrane and Billie Holiday. The presidential presence on Spotify marks the latest step by the White House to boost its...

Next week, members of the Copyright Royalty Board, three of the most powerful people you have never heard of will decide how to shift millions, heck, billions of dollars from one set of players to another.The CRB is the sole arbitrator of all matters of music royalties and it is about to issue a death sentence to digital music services, like Spotify and Pandora. Every five years, the board reviews royalties paid by digital streaming services. The board's troika is set up as a panel of administrative law judges, Suzanne Barnett, chief copyright royalty judge; David Stricker, economics judge and...

They may not have a crystal ball, but the folks at Spotify do have the next best thing: heaps and heaps of hot, fresh listener data. ...Here’s who’s next up, according to Spotify. Pell Børns Raury The Bohicas Mikky Ekko Seinabo Sey Houndmouth Ezra Vine Kim Cesarion MisterWives James Bay Ryn Weaver George Ezra Young Fathers Catfish and the Bottlemen MLKMN Francesco Yates AURORA

In what the music biz sees as a long overdue move, Nielsen SoundScan and its client Billboard will soon implement radical changes in the way album sales are calculated for the weekly chart that remains a key metric of an artist’s popularity. Beginning with the album chart that will be published Dec. 3 (covering sales for the week ending Nov. 30, which climaxes with retail’s Black Friday), music streams from services like Spotify and Beats Music will be tabulated as part of the data employed to rank the nation’s most popular albums. SoundScan will equate 1,500 song streams as the...

Thousands of music videos are expected to soon disappear off of YouTube because the independent record labels behind those artists are not involved in new deals being cut by the Google-owned streaming site. YouTube will announce in "a matter of days" that videos on the site featuring recording artists from some independent labels will be blocked, the FT reports. The ban is aimed at forcing the "refusenik" labels into signing licensing agreements with a new service, coming soon from Google. When the forthcoming service, YouTube Music Pass, is finally launched later this summer, subscribers are expected to be able to...

Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, she’s only paid for 15 CDs in her life. Our intention is not to embarrass or shame her. We believe young people like Emily White who are fully engaged in the music scene are the artist’s biggest allies. We also believe–for reasons we’ll get into–that she has been been badly misinformed by the Free Culture movement. We only...