Spotify UK is exiling the term “urban.”
The music-industry label that has long been used to designate many black artists, from R&B to hip-hop, in record company departments and Grammy categories will no longer be used by the streaming service in the UK.
“Moving forward, we won’t be using the word ‘urban’ in the UK anymore,” Safiya Lambie-Knight, Spotify UK’s head of artist and label partnerships, tells Music Week. “I look after a breadth of what were previously ‘urban’ genres, and it will allow us to have broader conversations around creativity and artists.”
The move comes in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement that has intensified internationally after George Floyd was brutally killed while in police custody in May.
After the music industry responded with Black Out Tuesday on June 2, Republic Records — label home to A-list acts like Taylor Swift, Drake and Ariana Grande — announced that it was removing the term “urban” from its verbiage.
Meanwhile, the Grammys renamed the Best Urban Contemporary Album category — won by pop stars such as Lizzo, the Weeknd and Beyoncé in recent years — as Best Progressive R&B Album.
Spotify UK’s move to get rid of the term comes as seven of the songs in the Top 10 of this week’s Hot 100 are led by black artists including DaBaby, Megan Thee Stallion, SAINt JHN and Lil Baby.
As for Spotify US, it’s apparently a moot issue: According to a spokesperson, the term “urban” was already not being used by the streaming service in this country.