Mysterious 'Delete Spotify' Image Appears -- on Spotify Itself

[Nevilledog]

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https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/mysterious-delete-spotify-image-appears-on-spotify-itself-1235166891/

As the Spotify-Neil Young-Joe Rogan controversy continued to rage on Saturday amid a firestorm of criticism toward the streaming giant, an image reading “Delete Spotify” appeared on Spotify’s own platform in a very unexpected place: the homepage of the ‘90s alt-rock band Belly — and only on desktop, not on phones.

A rep for Spotify did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.

Variety was unable to immediately reach a band rep for comment on Saturday afternoon, however, judging by Belly’s social media accounts, they are no fans of Spotify’s payment policies or its stance on Rogan. “Strictly from a business standpoint: Heinous enough that @Spotify doesn’t pay its artists but to use that revenue to fund Covid disinfo thereby prolonging the pandemic which has kept all of us from touring income makes it even more obvious #cancelspotify + #maskup #GetVaccinated” the band posted on Twitter Friday.

While rights-holders, usually a record label, control the uploading of music to Spotify, artists often can control the imagery that goes with their pages on the platform through the Spotify for Artists portal. It seems likely that a rep for the band uploaded the image independently of the rights holder, which ironically is Warner Music for all of Belly’s albums except its most recent studio album (Warner also holds the rights to most of Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s catalogs and have removed all of the titles the company controls from Spotify, at the artists’ request). It was not immediately clear why the “Delete Spotify” image appears only on desktops, not on phones.

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