Recruitment commercials for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are now not working on Spotify, the streaming service has confirmed. Variety was the primary outlet to report the information.
Final October, Spotify held agency in its determination to air immigration-enforcement advertisements between songs for customers on the corporate’s free tier. “This commercial is a part of a broad marketing campaign the US authorities is working throughout tv, streaming, and on-line channels,” the corporate mentioned in a press release. “The content material doesn’t violate our promoting insurance policies.”
Spotify now says the ICE advertisements stopped working on the finish of 2025—which means Wednesday’s fatal shooting of a Minnesota girl by an ICE agent didn’t play an element within the advertisements’ disappearance. “The commercials talked about have been a part of a U.S. authorities recruitment marketing campaign that ran throughout all main media and platforms,” a spokesperson mentioned in a press release to Pitchfork, including that the advertisements “ended on most platforms and channels, together with Spotify, on the finish of final 12 months.”
The marketing campaign—which additionally included streamers Amazon and YouTube, amongst others—was a part of the Trump administration’s $30 billion funding to rent greater than 10,000 deportation officers by the tip of 2025. Information that Spotify was airing ICE advertisements was met with widespread criticism from followers and artists, resulting in a basic boycott of the streamer by grassroots political group Indivisible. In 2019, musicians launched a separate boycott referred to as No Music for ICE aimed toward Amazon over its personal ICE contracts.
Correction: A earlier model of this story incorrectly said when No Music for ICE launched; it was in 2019, not 2025.
