What happened to artist Grigory Leps?

[jckeatley]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Any

Operating System

Any

My Question or Issue

I had been listening to a Russian artist Grigory Leps (Григорий Лепс).  Suddenly a couple of days ago, his content began disappearing, until only duet songs he had sung with another artist, or compilation albums that contained one of his songs were the only content of his out there.  He is a very popular artist in Russia.

After a bit of searching, I found that he is also the target of sanctions (!) by the U. S. government.  This would be like someone sanctioning Frank Sinatra because they hated the U. S.  I saw where a representative of Leps a few months ago said that Spotify was their least favorite platform to publish music.

Anyway, my question is this: Was this Leps' decision or Spotify's decision, or was it mutual?  Also, is Spotify going to be getting into the politics of enforcing the U. S. government's sanctions now?

[Alexalsa]

I was literally wondering the same thing. I noticed a lot of other Russian artists also disappearing on Spotify, this sucks because no music is really bringing me joy anymore...

[jckeatley]

Well, I noticed that both Amazon Music and Apple Music still have Grigory
Leps and many other Russian artists. Thinking of switching to one of those.
Yandex Music is not available here. In any case, I probably wouldn't be
able to get them a payment in rubles.

I don't know if this is a case of the other two banning as well, but they
just haven't caught up. Also, Spotify is not American but Swedish, which
makes this more confusing.

[Quelcune]

I just found out that Grigory Leps disappeared  from Spotify. What a pity! I love both GL and Okean Elzy, a Ukrainian rock band, I would have preferred Spotify to be neutral, it's not a political arena, it's just a streaming platform!

[dasha278]

I also noticed this today and they’ve also removed Lyube! I’m thinking of switching to another platform.

[benand103]

Leps is one of the greatest musicians in the Russian language whose musical compositions are on the level of Queen, U2, Bryan Adams etc. 

Spotify is useless to me without him. 

I've given notice and will move if he isn't restored pretty quickly. 

[Gackolpz]

Lyube, GL, Denis Maidanov, and Oleg Gazmanov have been removed from Spotify. But what makes this fishy is the fact that instead of the song being darkened and unplayable, all the song data is completely removed, the artist name, the song name, the album at, everything is gone, which is very unusual and seems to be targeted at Russian artists. Because of this, I am compelled to state that Spotify is removing artists for political reasons. 

[NoopyP]

Yes!!! I've been wondering the same thing, some of my favorite Russian artists have been disappearing and it's simply saddening. Lyube, Grigory Leps and more... I'm half French half Russian living in France and listening to Russian music from time to time is just about the last thing I have to connect to that part of my culture and getting that taken away from me is frankly very annoying. "Do better" Spotify please.

[NoopyP]

And now I see most of Polina Gagarina's songs have also disappeared!! TT

[delbesco]

Je viens de voir que Spotify a supprimé la diffusion d'artistes russes connus, comme Shaman et Oleg Gazmanov. C'est une honte, ce sont des artistes magnifiques, et c'est intolérable que spotify mélange la politique et la musique. De plus, cela montre leur soutien à un pays pro nazi. Enfin, cela va à l'encontre du contrat que j'ai signé avec spotify, puisque je ne peux plus écouter les morceaux que j'ai choisis. J'ai demandé une réduction de tarif, ou bien je me désabonnerai.

[pajpej]

Končím s spotify a idem na tidal tam su Leps Shaman Gagarina nech si tu politiku strčia ved oni vedia kam ja chcem počuvat hudbu a nie politiku

[Average_Joe]

   This is actually ridiculous, stop it with the censorship, stop it with the removal of music that people pay to listen to. So what if some may deem it inappropriate; those people then turn around and allow music that is ten-times more inappropriate. One of the artists I listen to was flat-out removed from Spotify, called lyube. Typically, they sing anti-war music. Then I’ll go and listen to YNW Melly sing about how he’s killed two people; completely uncontested. It’s not fair to the artist and it’s not fair to the person that pays for this subscription. STOP

[Ayanamiii]

Man I love GL, why they bring politics into music that’s sucks

[mifft2003]

The ongoing censorship by spotify is absolutely unacceptable. The problem is getting worse as now another of my saved bands 'Ahnenblut' has been censored. As a platform, Spotify should stay out of people's music preferences and refrain from educating me on what I can and cannot listen to. The reason that I became a premium customer was the perceived breadth of music available on the platform. Who do Spotify think they are dictating to customers what is acceptable music and what is not? 

[#15]

He is listed on my Spotify but he is unplayable is it some kind of sanction due to the war?