Spotify’s ‘Hot Country’ playlist, photographed on March 18, 2021 with 6.273 million followers (photo: Digital Music News)
For the past few weeks, Spotify has been quietly reinstalling Morgan Wallen on a number of high-ranking country playlists after removing him in early February. But the company stops at Hot Country, easily their biggest playlist of the genre.
It seems that Spotify is only willing to reinstall Morgan Wallen up to a point. Over the past few weeks, we’ve reported resets involving multiple Spotify country playlists, as well as the release of enhanced versions of Wallen’s latest album, Dangerous: The Double Album. But Digital Music News has now learned that Spotify is failing to reinstate Wallen in Hot Country, given the “bad optics” of the situation and aggressive pushback from its own employees.
Country fans on Spotify will know Hot Country as the great kahuna of country playlists on the platform. It is essentially what Rap Caviar is to rap and hip-hop, and it boasts an impressive 6.24 million followers. In fact, any country artist featured on Hot Country is likely to see an immediate surge in attention and fans, although it is now understood that Spotify is blocking Wallen from the playlist entirely without a long-term plan for the release. reinstatement.
The decision comes despite the high demand for Wallen’s music on the Spotify platform.
The singer remains a mainstay in Spotify’s ranking of the most-played artists and songs, despite, or more likely due to, the massive cancellation of the artist by the music industry in February. In Spotify’s ranking of the most popular songs in the US, for example, Wallen’s “Wasted on You” has recently been ranked alongside songs by popular hip-hop and pop artists such as Drake, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Juice WRLD and Justin Bieber. Other songs by Wallen are also doing well, with several tracks topping 100 million streams and powering a record 9-week run for Dangerous to the top of various album charts (probably one tenth ahead).
Despite some serious competition, Morgan Wallen remains the best-selling artist of 2021 and has already achieved an all-time sales record in the country music genre.
That is undoubtedly putting pressure on Spotify to reinstate the artist into country playlists, although it now appears the company is calculating a delicate balancing act. In early February, Spotify removed Wallen from all of its curated playlists, though the company also released an expanded version of the artist’s ultra-popular album. That release appeared to be coordinated with Wallen’s label, Big Loud / Republic (Universal Music Group), which “indefinitely suspended” the artist in February.
Despite the limited reintegrations to playlists, DMN is also learning that Spotify may benefit from a large migration of Morgan Wallen fans who have left their local radio stations.
Previously, Wallen was removed from virtually every radio station in the United States. But that sparked a massive backlash from listeners, along with threats to stop listening altogether. In response, several stations in the United States have quietly (or not so quietly) reinstated Morgan Wallen, even in defiance of corporate orders.
Just yesterday, Digital Music News first reported that multiple stations under the Cumulus Media umbrella have started playing Wallen again, and that multiple iHeartMedia stations could also break ranks in the coming days.
One company that refuses to budge is the Academy of Country Music, a group that barred Wallen from award eligibility after the artist was filmed speaking the n-word last month. As a result, Wallen will be conspicuously absent from the April Country Music Academy Awards, despite the artist’s recent record-breaking hits. Just last week, the Academy stepped up its ban and reportedly requested that Wallen’s name not be mentioned before, during or after the awards show broadcast.
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