Spotify mentioned on Friday it could pause promoting political commercials on its music streaming platform in early 2020.
The world’s hottest paid music streaming service, with practically 141 million customers tuning into its ad-supported platform in October, mentioned the pause would lengthen to Spotify unique and unique podcasts as effectively.
The transfer, which was first reported by Advert Age, comes as campaigns for the U.S. presidential election in November 2020 warmth up.
On-line platforms together with Fb and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are below rising strain to police misinformation on their platforms and cease carrying political adverts that include false or deceptive claims.
Twitter banned political adverts in October and, final month, Google mentioned it could cease giving advertisers the flexibility to focus on election adverts utilizing information equivalent to public voter data and basic political affiliations.
“At this time limit, we don’t but have the mandatory stage of robustness in our processes, techniques and instruments to responsibly validate and evaluation this content material,” a Spotify spokesperson mentioned in a press release.
“We’ll reassess this choice as we proceed to evolve our capabilities.”
Spotify, which was solely accepting political promoting in the USA, didn’t reply questions on how a lot income the corporate generates from political adverts.
The brand new coverage will cowl political teams equivalent to candidates for workplace, elected and appointed officers, political events, political motion committees (PACs) and SuperPACS, in addition to content material that advocates for or in opposition to these entities. Spotify may also not promote adverts that advocate for legislative and judicial outcomes.
The transfer solely applies to Spotify’s advert gross sales, not commercials embedded in third-party content material, although these will nonetheless be topic to Spotify’s broader content material insurance policies.
