Brands respond to racism on Blackout Tuesday

Streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music are participating in Blackout Tuesday, aimed at protesting against racism and police brutality. Yahoo Finance’s Emily McCormick and Dan Roberts breaks down how brands are responding to the latest headlines.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Many American cities and businesses in those cities clean up damage from another evening of looting that also followed a day-- another day of peaceful protest in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. We are seeing today a number of brands continued to respond to that as well IN something they're calling Blackout Tuesday. It started-- it seems to have started with a number of music companies, like Spotify and Apple Music, picking up on this theme, and it has spread to other companies as well. Our Emily McCormick is following that story for us. So Emily, it seems as though a lot of brands have jumped on this. What are the different ways that they're communicating that?

EMILY MCCORMICK: Absolutely, Julie. So just to back up a little bit, the call for companies to participate in Blackout Tuesday first circulated late last week on Instagram and other social media platforms as, quote, "a way-- a day of collective disconnect from work meant to help people reflect and come together in support of the black community." Now, it first began circulating among members of the music industry and record labels specifically, but it's since spread much further.

Big tech companies in the music and streaming space are showing up to this movement today. And some of those include Spotify. That company is adding an eight minute and 46 second track of silence to playlists and podcasts to pay tribute to George Floyd. And that duration is, of course, significant because it's the amount of time that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held Floyd down with his knee, ultimately killing him last week. And Spotify is also prominently promoting black artists with curated playlists and is replacing a number of its images and logos with blacked out images.

And then looking at Apple Music, that service has cancelled its usual Beats 1 radio schedule, and it's sending users to a streaming station that celebrates music created by black artists. We're also seeing Amazon Music pausing social media use for the day, and YouTube said it's pledging $1 million to support causes addressing social injustices.

Taking a look at some of the music labels that are taking part, some of those are the major labels like Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony, along with a myriad of smaller labels and individual artists, many of whom have altered business for the day and have done things like cancel previous scheduled listening events. Many of these organizations are also contributing to Black Lives Matter and other organizations working to combat racial injustice.

So really a number of actions that we're seeing being taken at the company and individual level today. Many users on Instagram and other social media platforms are also posting images of blank black squares that are hashtagged as Blackout Tuesday and the show must be paused in order to show solidarity with this. Julie?

JULIE HYMAN: Emily, thank you so much, appreciate it. And I want to bring our panel into this conversation now. We will be continuing it with some other individuals in just a moment, but I want to bring in Dan Roberts on this because Dan, you have been watching this sort of brand reaction. And as always in this kind of situation, it's hard to parse out what people will take as genuine, right? When you see companies sort of chiming in on this kind of thing.

DAN ROBERTS: That's exactly right, Julie. And you know, I give the caveat, here at Yahoo Finance, we cover business, and we cover what companies are doing. And so you know, it's in our purview. But of course, what brands are saying and how they're responding is obviously not, to anyone, really, the most important thing right now. Now that said, I do want to start by picking up on the black squares on Instagram. Because what's interesting already is a lot of people are pointing out that even though obviously the intentions here are very good, a lot of people this morning who were quick to post a black square on Instagram used the Black Lives Matter hashtag.

And now a lot of people, including "Vice" just has a story on this, are pointing out that if you do that, you shouldn't include that hashtag because it kind of crowds out the important information on Instagram that you can usually find by clicking Black Lives Matter. People are looking for helpful information. Instead, now it's all these black squares. So people are saying, if you post that, don't include that particular hashtag. Do BLM or just do Blackout Tuesday.

But it's just an example to me, of sometimes, you know, these performative social media posts, even though they have good intentions, they can cause problems. They can have a negative impact. And in addition, postings on Instagram isn't quite the same as taking action. It's not the same as donating to a cause. And so similarly, when you look at how brands are responding, a lot of brands have posted statements that support. That's great. It's better than not saying something.

And of course, another interesting thing here is that brands feel compelled to say something because silence is also viewed as complicity, and it's viewed as part of the problem. So they're posting statements. But again, a statement doesn't necessarily do much. I would distinguish between the brands who have put out PR statements, which often are geared toward optics, and the brands that have actually said, we're making a donation, or the brands who have said, we're taking action. Here are the actual concrete things we're doing--

JULIE HYMAN: Right.

DAN ROBERTS: --to address this huge systemic problem.