Spotify

Spotify contributes to digital opportunities for women and girls through various initiatives. For instance, in Sweden, Spotify has collaborated with EMMSTechnology, a non-profit that aims to empower women of colour and other underrepresented groups in the tech industry, to organise workshops and networking meetups. The company enhances digital access for diverse users by incorporating accessibility considerations into its product design processes and developing products catered to people with disabilities. Additionally, it partners with the Danish mobile app Be My Eyes to enable visually impaired listeners to receive help and support while using the Spotify platform. The company also discloses its employment figures for its main markets of operation.

Spotify’s flagship programme in the area of digital skills development, Sound Up, has now been running for four years. The programme provides training and support to enable women of colour and other underrepresented groups in a number of countries to develop podcasts.

Spotify reports the number of data breaches it experiences and has a high-level policy document committing to uphold data privacy. On child online safety, ithas introduced a platform named Spotify Kids that allows parents to create accounts for their children and control the content in those accounts.

Spotify demonstrates a high-level commitment to open-source innovation, partakes in open-source projects and collaborates with universities on research. For instance, Spotify joined DIMPACT, a collaboration between the University of Bristol and media companies around the world, to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with delivering digital content. The company also contributes to the tech innovation ecosystem by supporting social start-ups.

While Spotify supports access to technology for vulnerable groups, there is little evidence of the company supporting digital access more widely. Next to increasing efforts in this area, the company can consider disclosing how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders, report the taxes it pays in its main markets of operation and expand its employment figures to include all its markets of operation.

Spotify has an opportunity to support digital skills development among vulnerable and underrepresented groups. Additionally, the company should consider carrying out a third-party assessment of the impact of its existing programmes on advancing digital skills and report on its financial and in-kind contributions to these programmes.

While Spotify commits to maintaining user security, there is little evidence of how responsibility for this is implemented at the management level. Similarly, there is no evidence of how the company monitors and remedies cybersecurity incidents. The company can adopt a group privacy policy and report the government requests it receives for user information. Further, as a digital technology company, Spotify should make a high-level commitment to child online safety and support initiatives that address the issue.

Relative to other leading digital companies, Spotify demonstrates little evidence of supporting the tech start-up ecosystem. There is an opportunity for the company to support start-ups, particularly those founded by people from underrepresented groups. The company also has an opportunity to demonstrate its support for inclusive innovation by disclosing the number of women it employs in research and development (R&D) roles, as it has done previously. Further, it can enhance transparency by disclosing how it considers ethics and human rights in its R&D activities.

Spotify does not publish a policy statement committing to respect human rights. Furthermore, the company’s commitment to respect the ILO core labour rights can be stronger. For example, it does not commit to respecting the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in a publicly available policy statement. Spotify does not disclose a process to identify, assess and act on salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. Moreover, the company does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations. Spotify does have a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints.

Spotify publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places the same requirements on its business relationships and monitors their health and safety performance. However, the company does not disclose a policy commitment stating that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours, and it is not explicit that it requires its business relationships to make this commitment. Furthermore, it does not publicly commit to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment or to paying its workers a living wage. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. However, it can also disclose employee breakdowns against other indicators of diversity, such as age group.

Spotify has anti-bribery and anti-corruption policies, but it does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. While the company has a UK-specific tax strategy, it does not disclose its income tax payments for all of its tax jurisdictions. Moreover, Spotify does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Specifically, the company has no public statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.