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Story summary
- Explicit songs dropped to 13% of Spotify’s 2026 Top 50, down from 74% in 2018, as listeners favored older radio-friendly hits like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
- Hip-hop’s share of explicit entries fell as the genre lost its late-2010s dominance.
- Spotify deleted over 500,000 streams of Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings” after detecting artificial plays tied to betting on Kalshi, saying it uses best-in-class detection and mitigation practices.
- Apple Music added AI-transparency tags.
