DAVID ROVICS, [email protected], @drovics
Musician David Rovics had his entire catalogue of 50 albums deleted by YouTube — a move that seems to be without precedent against a musical artist.
He just wrote the piece “YouTube, aka The Biggest Platform on Earth, Has Deleted All My Albums” and the song “They Deleted David Rovics” — available on X and SoundCloud. His songs include “Stop the Genocide,” “St. Patrick Battalion,” “1848” and “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You.”
He writes: “It seems abundantly obvious to me that everyone who believes in free expression, whatever side of various political equations they may be on, should be concerned about what YouTube just did to me. If it could happen to me because of my allegedly controversial political viewpoints, it could happen to you because of yours. …
“My songs are streamed millions of times every year on YouTube, millions of times a year on Spotify.”
Rovics reports that “it is so rare that an artist has their entire catalog deleted by a platform for reasons unrelated to copyright infringement, there are no examples available aside from mine that I can find.”
Rovics writes that Gemini, the Alphabet/Google (which owns YouTube) chatbot, accurately admits the move would have a “significant and strongly negative impact on potential audience growth. …
“One of the other chatbots I consulted about having my entire catalog deleted by YouTube Music was confident that because this sort of action is so unheard-of and appeared to be so obviously political in nature, surely the artist targeted in this way would benefit by getting lots of media publicity.”