Spotify suspends political ads ahead of 2020 election

What political street fight? I can’t hear you over the sound of my free tunes.

Spotify will suspend political advertisements beginning in 2020, the company confirmed in a new report from Ad Age. 

The ban will take effect on Spotify’s ad-supported tier, and on exclusive and original podcasts (but not external podcasts that already have ads embedded in them).

The new policy doesn’t mean the Republican National Committee’s calls to action will be gone from your Trap Tunes 2020 playlist forever. Spotify is instead pausing the practice until it determines that it has better systems in place to ensure these ads abide by its terms; basically, that they’re not full of damaging lies.

Spotify joins a number of other tech platforms in its ban. According to a recent review of policies from Reuters, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitch have all said they’re not accepting ad dollars from people seeking to affect the outcome of elections. Google, Snap, and Reddit have all placed certain restrictions on political ads, but haven’t banned them outright. Meanwhile, Facebook is the exception as it continues to bafflingly stick to its guns: allowing political advertising, whole hog, even if the ads are misleading or contain lies.

Spotify’s biggest competitor, Apple Music, doesn’t need a policy on the political ads front; Apple Music does not have an ad-supported free tier like Spotify. However, Pandora (and its owner, Sirius XM) do have pricing tiers with ads. Mashable reached out to Sirius for information on the platforms’ policies, and will update this when and if we hear back.

With 2020 just days away, having a policy on political ads (with or without lies!) is probably a good idea. Passively absorbing misleading ear worms sounds like a scary way to get informed before some pretty important elections. 

We guess that means more sock ads for everyone.