An excerpt of a Hitler speech, calls for “Aryans” to make a brand new start and references to white power have all been found in songs on major music streaming services.
Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music have now removed racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic content from their services, following a BBC investigation.
Deezer was also made aware of similar songs, mostly linked to white supremacy, on its platforms.
It comes three years after Spotify tried to crackdown on a similar issue and updated its hate content policy.
Spotify said the content flagged by the BBC clearly violated that policy. YouTube said there was no place for hate on its platform while Apple Music has now hidden the majority of the tracks.
The evidence
It’s difficult to quantify the scale of the problem. However, the BBC investigation easily found at least 20 songs with disturbing content:
- Songs glorifying ‘Aryan nations’ (The Nazis’ racial philosophy taught that Aryans were the master race)
- Bands repeatedly using anti-Semitic stereotypes and language, even celebrating the Holocaust
- Publicly curated playlists on Spotify under the title NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal), a genre linked to Nazism
- More than 30 groups associated with organisations classified as hate groups by civil rights groups
Searching out the music required no specialist skills or effort.
In some cases, racist titles of albums and songs had been changed to remove words such as ‘Aryan’ and ‘white’ but the lyrics remained the same.
Most examples were found on Spotify and in one case, a song on its platform contained these lyrics:
