Plays Of XXXTentacion's "SAD!" Decline After Spotify Ban

XXXTentacion, R. Kelly, and Tay-K are the first (and so far only) the artists to have their music banned from Spotify's playlists under the streaming service's new anti-hate policy.

You can still find their songs through search. Using XXTentacion's hit "SAD!", Billboard calculated how much a playlist ban can cost an artist.

In the six days since XXXTentacion’s "SAD!" was removed from Spotify’s playlists including RapCaviar, where it held prominent placement, the track’s streams dropped 17 percent per day in the United States on average. That continued rate of decline, Billboard estimates, could cost the rapper as much as $60,000 in revenue in a year from -- roughly ­equivalent to the United States’ median household income -- from one song on one service in the U.S. alone. In the four days after "SAD!" was removed from Spotify's playlists (May 10-13), its on-demand audio streams dropped 9 percent across all streaming services in the U.S. compared to the four days prior (May 6-9), according to Nielsen Music. Radio play for "SAD!" also began declining after its Spotify ­de-playlisting, although no stations appear to have removed the track from rotation altogether.

60K isn't going to make or break an artist. But when you start considering this will affect all of their songs going forward, you can see where it will become a problem, especially to the extent radio piggybacks on the ban.