It's inevitable, perhaps, that a sloppily rolled out policy on art and morals will be sloppily walked back. Three weeks after announcing that R. KELLY and XXXTENTACION would be banished from playlists and other promotions under a policy on "hateful conduct," SPOTIFY on Friday repealed the policy and immediately put one of the two back on playlists, including the influential RAP CAVIAR. Under pressure from artists and labels, some of whom threatened to pull content from the service, Spotify essentially told the world it's now officially good with XXXTentacion but not good with R. Kelly. Can someone please explain how that's better? Or what that even means? In a blog post explaining its thinking, Spotify said a lot of smart things. "We don't aim to play judge and jury." "Our playlist editors ... focus on what music will positively resonate with their listeners. That can vary greatly from culture to culture, and playlist to playlist." Yes and yes. But the company *is* still playing judge and jury; it just changed one of its verdicts on appeal. And while values and interpretations and the resonance of specific pieces of art do vary from culture to culture, I'm not aware of any culture—or at least any culture that you or I or Spotify should care about—in which domestic violence or sexual abuse is OK. That's not a thing that varies among enlightened cultures. (And allow me to use this space to remind the playlist editors at YOUTUBE MUSIC that there are still three BRAND NEW songs on their "True Teenage Romance" playlist. If there's positive resonance there, I really don't want to know about it.) There's no question that Spotify's policy on hateful conduct ("hate speech" still remains an absolute no-no, the service says) was poorly thought through and rolled out. The fact that everyone it initially applied to was a black hip-hop artist made things worse. "Oops, sorry, we're going to try again" may have been the only appropriate response. I'm not sure this is quite that though... The target length of a musical release has ballooned from 3 minutes to 40-ish minutes to 80-ish minutes to infinity-ish minutes as we've transitioned over the decades from 45rpm singles to 33rpm albums to CDs to streaming. As a reaction against endless, editor-free album-making and a vote for artistic immediacy, I'm in KANYE WEST's corner on the mysterious power of the seven-track album, which has been the format of choice for the two most notable albums released in the past two weeks, with more to come (at seven-day intervals, naturally)... Here are the early takes on the seven tracks of YE, which may turn out to be hip-hop's SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (which a lot of people loved, btw): "Curiously safe-sounding." "Part suicide note, part ransom note" (that's NPR MUSIC's RODNEY CARMICHAEL; at the same link, his colleague ANN POWERS compares the album to the BEACH BOYS' SMILE and BIG STAR's THIRD, which I'm not sure is a different argument). "He's like J.R. SMITH at the end of regulation in Game 1 ... We’re all LEBRON." "What’s most challenging about it may not be interpreting what he’s saying more than coming to terms with it"... YE has sparked some good, healthy discussion on bipolar disorder... This would've been my favorite line on the album if he had ended it where I end it, which he doesn't: "Time is extremely valuable and I prefer to waste it"... TUMA BASA joins YOUTUBE... MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO wants NEIL PORTNOW's job... CHRISSY TEIGEN queries the BACKSTREET BOYS... RIP EDDY CLEARWATER.