Spotify incoming profanity warning

Until the last 50 years or so, you didn’t have to wonder if most popular music contained explicit content. At worst, the content was the equivalent of a PG movie (ie, things might be implied but not said).

I’m not here to determine if culturally we’re on a downward spiral or if people are getting more creative and pushing boundaries. To each their own. However, there is still a time and place for certain music. Many of us have found ourselves in a situation where the music we know isn’t appropriate starts playing. What would the world be like if you had a little more control over when explicit music plays? One could imagine an experience where you are shown a popup that confirms you’re okay with a little spice in your songs.

The interesting thing is how often this popup would appear with certain artists. One easy solution is that this is a one-time dismissable popup, or you could show it with new listening sessions. I wonder if and how this would impact an artist’s overall stream count. This is likely a degradation to most listeners’ experience, but it’d be an interesting social experiment at the very least.

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