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UPDATE: Petition to ban Ye from Spotify, Apple, Amazon passes 68,500 signatures

UPDATE 2: A petition to ban the music of Kanye West from Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services added more signatures overnight Tuesday.

As of Wednesday morning, the petition had grown to more than 68,581 signatures, with more added every few seconds.

So far, none of the major streaming services have commented on the campaign. But they have been reluctant to be seen as censors in the past unless the offending speech is within the lyrics of a song available there.

The Change.org petition was launched last Friday, December 2nd after West made his latest antisemitic comments during an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars.

“I like Hitler,” he declared during the interview. West is also a long-time Holocaust denier.

“By doing this, I hope that we can limit Kanye’s influence on society by eliminating his ability to make money off of people streaming his music,” wrote petition creator Nathan Goergen. “His statements are virtually irredeemable, and the time has finally come for him to receive a major punishment. We cannot let him continue to influence our youth and our society as a whole.


Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.

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