lgbtq+ WRITING

So who knew this?

Spotify doesn’t want erotica audiobooks on its platform.

My audiobook will be published on all of the major platforms, including (I’d hoped) Spotify.

However, their review has determined that my content violated their terms and conditions of use – specifically their platform rules for Sensitive Content.

Their practices on this are sketchy. For music, Spotify introduced a system designed to deal with explicit content in 2018 and explicit songs are marked with an ‘E’. Anyone who wants to avoid hearing swearing can choose to block explicit content in their settings, and clean versions will often be offered instead.

However, the lyrics in Spotify’s database for many of these edited versions can be the same as the originals, meaning anyone looking at the lyrics will see the explicit words.

Even for audiobooks, a quick little search by me found a lot of explicit content as explicit as mine if not more.

It’s only mildly annoying – I’ll still be on Audible, Apple, Libro etc. etc.. But Spotify is a bit of a different platform and an ability to reach a bit of a different audience.