YouTube has removed R. Kelly's channels, but people can still listen to his songs on the premium YouTube Music platform
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YouTube has removed R. Kelly's channels from its platform.
People attempting to access the R&B singer's YouTube channels on October 5 were greeted with an error message.
Kelly's music is still available on YouTube Music, and on Apple Music and Spotify.
YouTube has removed two channels linked to R&B singer R. Kelly, though his songs can still be accessed on the platform's streaming service, YouTube Music.
R. Kelly - whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly - was found guilty and convicted of federal racketeering and sex-trafficking charges in September after five weeks of testimonies and 10 hours of deliberation from the jury. He now faces life in prison.
The singer made it big in the 1990s with hit songs like "I Believe I Can Fly." But YouTube has now made moves to remove him from its platform entirely.
"Egregious actions committed by R. Kelly warrant penalties beyond standard enforcement measures due to a potential to cause widespread harm. Ultimately we are taking this action to protect our users similar to other platforms," said a memo by YouTube's head of legal, Nicole Alston, as seen by Bloomberg.
At press time, Insider saw that both YouTube channels related to Kelly, R. Kelly TV and R. Kelly Vevo, had been taken offline. At midnight on October 5, both channels displayed the message noting that they were "terminated for a violation of YouTube's Terms of Service." An hour later, attempts to access both channels' webpages were greeted with the message: "This page isn't available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else."
However, the singer's tracks were still available on YouTube Music. User-created content like covers of the singer's music were still up on YouTube, too.
According to Bloomberg, YouTube in 2018 also removed a channel linked to Larry Nassar, a disgraced USA gymnastics doctor who was sentenced to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing seven girls.
Kelly's music is still available on music streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music.
In 2018, Spotify removed Kelly from its playlists under its "Hate Content & Hateful Conduct" policy. However, the policy was reversed after just three weeks. The platform then rolled out a new function in 2019, that allowed users to mute the singer themselves.
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